# marriage license vs. marriage certificate



## someshine (Dec 5, 2012)

Background: I'm a USC and my husband is a UKC, we were married in the UK and are currently residing in the UK. 
We're filing the I-130 (petition for alien relative) through the London USCIS Field Office because I've been a UK resident for more than 6 months now. I'm looking at the checklist (which I want to point out may be different than the requirements for those filing through the Chicago Lock Box, etc.) and it says "Please provide a marriage certificate issued by a public authority to show that a public record exists of the marriage between you and your spouse. *We will require a copy of your marriage license plus marriage certificate* to show that it has been publicly registered in the state/country."
We weren't issued a copy of the marriage license, we only have a marriage certificate. My question is do I need to find one (assuming the UK registrar would give us a copy), or is this some sort of just in case clause in case they don't think our marriage certificate is real? Anyone have any experience with this? In all the other information online it only says to include a marriage certificate and there's no mention of a marriage license.


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## The_Okie (Jul 31, 2013)

Weird, never heard of that requirement before. But if they say "plus" instead of "and/or" then they most likely mean both. Won't be hard to get though, and luckily you won't have to deal with document translations. USCIS has been changing since January this year to try and make paperwork go through faster and perhaps this is some new requirement I've never heard of/perhaps for UK citizens.


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## twostep (Apr 3, 2008)

I a taking a stab at this - license: document "authorizing" the marriage


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