The importance of buying civil registration certificates

Genealogy can be an expensive hobby if you don't keep your budget under control.
As with most hobbies, there are costs involved but there are ways to manage the costs in order to access the information you are looking for, whilst getting value for money.

The amount of genealogical information online is staggering and endless opportunities arise for you to put your hand in your pocket. You will find yourself facing lots of temptation to buy this book or magazine, or to subscribe to a particular service.  Of course, it is your decision to decide what purchases to make but I would like to make a strong case in relation to the purchase of birth, marriage and death certificates.

The vital records of births, marriages and deaths will underpin a lot of your genealogical research; after all, we are all born and then die and many of us will marry. The indexes for these records give reference information which can be used to purchase full certificates. I do know that some family historians feel the indexes are sufficient to 'prove' that this is their ancestor but unfortunately that is not always the case. The fact that your subject has the same name, is about the right age and is found in about the right area is really not sufficient proof. Coincidences do happen. It is more common than you think that after further in depth research, information comes to light which proves that you have been researching the wrong person. This can be very disappointing when you have spent so much time going down one research route.

As well as giving you confidence that you are researching the correct person, a further value in birth, marriage and death certificates is in the extra information they provide which give you many more reference points to use for matching purposes. Here are a few examples.

Birth certificates will give you the mother's maiden name enabling you to search for a marriage for the parents. Or is there no father's name recorded, most commonly meaning that it was an illegitimate birth? This adds a further circumstance to pursue.
Marriage certificates will give you the father's names of both bride and groom. They will also record whether the marriage took place after banns or with a special license and always check the names of the witnesses. 
Death certificates will record whether a coroner was involved as well as the name, address and occupation of the informant.

The examples above are just a few of the clues you will find on civil registration certificates, many of which will enable you to extend your research.

I can understand people's reluctance in the past to spend money on certificates but in recent years, the system has provided more options and certainly better value. 
A paper copy of a certificate, priced at £12.50, is only needed for official purposes. For family history purposes, the option of purchasing either a PDF at £8 each, or a digital image at £3 each is available and clearly a much cheaper option. If you are not able to supply the Index reference, the General Register Office (GRO) will charge an extra £4 to do a search for you. Note that exactly the same information that is relevant to family history research on the paper certificates also appears on PDFs and digital images.
However, the following exclusions apply:

PDFs or digital images of births are only available for events registered 1837-1923.
PDFs or digital images of deaths are only available for events registered 1837-1957.

No marriage certificates at all are available as PDFs or digital images.

Paper certificates and PDFs will be posted/emailed to you in about 5 days, but this can be variable. Digital images will be immediately accessible.

So once you get back to the mid/early 20th century, birth and death certificates can be purchased at a relatively low cost and well worth it for the research value they bring.