As a newlywed from King County, I couldn’t help but take notice that King County marriage records are – for the first time –  being added to the Washington State Digital Archives, allowing couples to find their marriage info  in seconds on the Web.

Starting this month, the DA began ingesting more than 1 million King County marriage records into the state’s premier electronic database. It will take about a year to get all of those records into the system. Marriage records from many other Washington counties are already available online.

To search for your Washington marriage record, simply go to www.digitalarchives.wa.gov and enter your first and last name into the yellow search box. When you see the results page, click on the plus sign next to “marriage records”. Then, click on the name you would like to access – you will get all the information contained on that person’s certificate or return. (If you would like an actual scanned copy of the document, you can order it for a few dollars through the search as well).

Of course, I’ll have to wait a while to access my own marriage record online – King County will decide when 2009 marriages will appear on the Digital Archives. For now, KC marriage certificates from 1855 to 2000, and marriage returns from 1891 to 1939 will be searchable as they are indexed.

I did, however, find my brother’s record (shhh!) from his marriage 11 years ago in exactly… four seconds.