What and where else can i try?

[enticce]

Good afternoon
I'd like some advice on where else I can look for a particular marriage please. I've hunted and hunted, and even thought maybe they didnt get married, or were married to other people, and had to live together instead. In the end i've become 'search blind' if you understand what i mean and so i thought maybe someone here can get me back on track.

the marriage is between
Charles William Ward born 27 Jan 1857 in Deptford, London, Packer. Father - Charles Stephen Ward, Pork Butcher. Mother - Elizabeth Sarah Townsend. Both parents born in Deptford, London.
and
Sarah Ann Joyce born 6 July 1855 in Bow, London. Father - Joseph Joyce, Engine driver at factory, born in Shellow, Willingale, Esesx. Mother - Eleanor Penten, born Gresham, Norfolk.

I have checked all sorts of areas, even omiting a parish name when looking up marriage records to give as broad a search as possible. I've tried foreign records. I've looked at siblings of William and Sarah to see where they all married. i've ordered birth certificate information for their children to look at Sarah's surname details.
 I think I have narrowed their possible marriage date down to either 1874 or 1875 because.....
Sarah Ann was a witness to her brother Joseph's marriage on 2 Aug 1874. She signed the register using the surname Joyce, so was not married then.
William and Sarah's first child registered was Clara Louisa Ward born 30 Oct 1875. On the birth documents under the heading 'mother' were the words Sarah Ann Ward formerly Joyce.

I know it's possible Sarah just used the surname Ward and wasnt married, but if she was then her marriage to William took place between Aug 1874 and Oct 1875.

It could be that the records were destroyed but I'm hoping they've just been accidentally missed from any transcribing. So is there some advice that anyone can give me to try and find this record. Anywhere else I can look, apart from physically travelling to look at various parish records? Unfortunately I'm unable to do that at the moment.

Thank you all :-)
Carla

[Milliepede]

My first suggestion is always that they may never have married at all which I can see you have already considered as an option.

It certainly looks like you have tried all the usual places.  I wouldn't think about travelling anywhere to look for something that may not exist but will certainly have a look for you.

[Little Nell]

As you say, they may never have married.

Equally there is the possibility that they married a long time after you think the marriage might have occurred. Two of my ancestors finally married 16 years after their first child was born and not actually in their home parish.

There was a book written maybe twenty years ago (available to borrow from the Internet Archive
https://archive.org/details/comedyoferrorsor0000fost) called A comedy of errors, or, The marriage records of England and Wales, 1837-1899 which detailed how errors can and did creep into the system.

I see that they are living at the same address as Joseph Joyce and his family in 1881.  If they didn't marry, does this mean that Joseph was happy with the arrangement? 

Nell

[enticce]

Thanks to both if you. Food for thought.