Legalising a marriage certificate?

Hi guys,

Two weeks until my fiancee (US citizen, UK resident) and I (British citizen) get married in South Carolina. ESTA is sorted, we've checked with a probate judge in the county that I just need my passport for the license and everything's shaping up.

The other day I was on gov.uk as they have a section about marrying abroad. I filled in our details about who was marrying who in what country, and one of the recommendations at the end was this:

"Depositing your marriage certificate in the UK

This isn’t a legal requirement, but it does mean you’ll be able to order an official, certified copy of your certificate in English at any time from GRO.

Check with the embassy or consulate to find out if you need to get your certificate legalised by the local authorities in the US first."

Any idea what the last sentence means? We'll be depositing our certificate when we return to the UK, and copies are filed in South Carolina. The certificate is obviously notarised and legitimate so I don't know what needs 'legalising'.

I contacted the US Embassy in London, as it suggests, and they responded to say they can't do that (I already knew) and to email the Secretary of State in South Carolina, which seems slightly weird.

All we want to do is deposit our certificate in the UK.

Nothing needs legalising as far as I know - I've never heard of anyone here on the forum having to do anything to legalise a US marriage certificate. And I haven't ever heard of anyone on this forum 'depositing' a marriage certificate in the UK either.

From what I've read of other's experiences here at UK-Y all you need to do is:
- Go to the US
- Get married
- Wait for your marriage certificate to be issued (either on the day of the wedding or you may have to wait a few days for an official copy - it depends on the county/state you marry in)
- Apply for the visa
- Move to the UK

I think they are referring to an Apostille, which is what is used for some documents to be certified by the issuing government to ensure the document is genuine.

My husband and I were married in NYC and EVERYONE in NYC kept insisting we needed a marriage certificate with an apostille for the marriage to be recognized in the UK.  Even though we had read here on the forum we did not need it, we were standing right there with the opportunity to get it and everyone around us was telling us we needed it (on our wedding day).  We went on and got it (took less than an hour and cost about $3). However, to test the theory I submitted my application with a standard marriage certificate (not the apostille) and it was 100% fine (as I knew it would be from reading real life experiences here).  The UK recognizes a marriage in the US (and vice versa) and no additional certifications were needed.

We do have one awesome looking marriage certificate though!   

You don't need to deposit your certificate, the UK recognises a US issued marraige certificate. The comment states that it enables you to get a certified copy in English - so that is the advantage, if you have a non-English language marraige certificate.

Cheers guys. Just to be clear, we're not applying for any visas on our return - my fiancee has ILR and I'm a british citizen. It was just for the purpose of depositing it here witj the General Register Office so we can get copies in the future etc. You don't have to do that but we'd like to.

Sounds like there's no need to do it, but that they'll mention it when we're there anyway.