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Are marriage records open to the public?

I know it's an odd question, but I was just curious. For instance, if you were looking into your geneology, would you be able to find recent marriages, or would it be limited only to marriages recorded in the 1800's and such?

Public Comments

1. No, but name changes are. As most marriages result in a name change, you should be able to find the information you're looking for. If you notice in your local paper, all of the marriage announcements are made by the families. However there is occasionally a listing of all name changes put in legal-speak.
2. I Believe they have to be so old before you can see them. For my province it's 50 years for deaths,75 years for marriages, 100 years for births. But if your family for a fee you can get a copy. For older marriages it may be hard to find because the churches looked after that.
3. In the US there is a federal law protecting those records for 72 years from the date of the event. That's why census records are only open to the public from 1930 back and why most of the genealogy sites don't have any records more recent than the 1920s. The way around it is to pull the newspapers from the town at that period and pull the public announcement. They did publish the list of marriage licenses issued until the late 1970s.
4. Even though you go into YA Australia, YA Canada or whatever, all the Q in English end up in the same "pot", and people all over the world see them. That is why it is a good idea to put the country and province you are talking about into your post. The answer depends on where you look. Most newspapers publish articles on weddings in the society columns. If the town your ancestors were married in was small, or they were socially prominent, or, better yet, both, and you could find it, you'd see all sorts of good stuff; "The best man was Charles Smith, the groom's nephew", "the matron of honor was Mrs. John Jones, the bride's eldest sister" and so forth. The city clerk in Staniuslaus County, California used to have a web site with marriage data up to 2000 or so. They shut it down for privacy reasons. For a while you could still look the data up if you spent your lunch hour in the court house. I think even that has stopped. Marriage data gives you the bride's maiden name, which will help thieves steal someone's identity. Some US Gen Web sites have some marriage transcriptions, but they stop at 1900 or 1920 or 1950. There isn't a world-wide (country-wide, state-wide) web site for marriage records. Illinois has a web site for marriages 1763 - 1900, though.