Hi
Have any baptisms been found for Alfred & Eleanor's children?
If not I would suggest that they may not have been of an Anglican persuasion and so it is unlikely that any marriage, if celebrated in a non-Anglican (Jewish, Quaker) or non-conformist place of worship would exist online. Likewise if they married in a register office, those images won't be online either.
Eleanor's place of birth alternates between Iver & Uxbridge, if she was born in Iver any
relevant records would be at the Buckinghamshire records office at Aylesbury.
I wonder if the Kedge family has anything to do with this? Elizabeth Kedge aged 12 is a visitor from Uxbridge in 1871 and there again in 1881.
As to why records don't exist, very few recent registers have been lost. Parish registers were and still are required to be kept safely in churches and places of worship. Since 1837 there have always been 2 copies of a marriage entry in existance, one at the church, the other at the register office. Prior to 1837 a duplicate set of registers was sent to the Bishop for the Bishops Trancripts so there was a copy there as well. It is well documented that records do not exist in the GRO index for numerous reasons, most notably this
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mikefost/His research shows that if you can actually go back to the 'original' parish registers you will find your missing entries. If the marriage you are looking for can't be found there, then approach the register office and ask them to search their non-Anglican registers. The indexes were compiled manually until quite recently. Apart from spelling mistakes arising from not being able to decipher handwriting, or fingers hitting the wrong keys on typewriters, entries were written onto slips of paper which were then sorted into the relevant order for compilation. Both slips for each couple were lost. Some half entries are found where one slip is lost which is no good is you don't know the surname of the spouse. I was also told recently of a 2001 marriage which does not exist in the GRO index because the vicar took 18 months to make his submissions by which time it was far too late for this and about 50 other marriages to be included.
Dawn
