How to Scan a Marriage Certificate with Your iPhone
Lay the certificate flat, light it from one side so the embossed seal and any ribbon show up, and capture the whole sheet including the decorative border in Document mode. Many marriage certificates are larger than letter size, so back the phone away rather than cropping into the border. Processing happens on your iPhone, so the certificate is not uploaded to a server.
Tools used: Crop & perspective fixRotateBrightness & contrastOCR text recognitionPDF conversion
Step by step
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Take it out of the frame
If the certificate is behind glass, remove it. Glass reflects the room, your phone, and your hands, and no editing removes a reflection sitting on top of the names. If it genuinely cannot be unframed, shoot at a slight angle in a dim room lit from one side and correct the geometry afterwards.
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Handle the oversize problem
Ceremonial certificates are often bigger than a standard sheet. Instead of leaning in and clipping the border, put the certificate on the floor or a large table and raise the phone until the whole sheet plus a small margin fits in frame. Backing off and cropping later always beats a missing corner.
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Rake the light across the seal
A raised or embossed seal has no ink and disappears under flat overhead light. Position a lamp or window to one side so the light skims the surface and the embossing casts a shallow shadow. Check the viewfinder — if you cannot see the seal there, it will not be in the file.
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Include the border and the signatures
Keep the full decorative border, the officiant and witness signatures, and any registration number in frame. Recipients use the border and the seal together to judge whether a copy is complete, and a certificate cropped to just the text block looks like an excerpt.
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Straighten and export as colour PDF
Use Crop & perspective fix to square the sheet and Rotate if you shot it landscape. Export as a colour PDF so gold foil, coloured ink, and ribbon remain visible, then open it and confirm both names and the date read cleanly at full zoom.
Frequently asked
- Will a scanned marriage certificate be accepted for a name change?
- It varies by institution. Banks and employers often accept a clear scan, while government agencies commonly require a certified copy issued by the registrar. Ask the specific office what they accept before you rely on a phone scan — the answer differs even between departments of the same body.
- My certificate is behind glass. Can I still scan it?
- Better to remove it, but if you cannot, work in a dim room with one soft light source off to the side, keep your body and the phone out of the reflection path, and shoot at a slight angle so the reflection falls outside the certificate. Crop & perspective fix will square the result.
- Which certificate should I scan, the ceremonial one or the legal one?
- They are often two different documents. The decorative keepsake given at the ceremony is frequently not the legally registered record, and only the registrar-issued certificate carries the registration number that officials look for. Scan whichever the recipient names, and if in doubt, the registered one.
- Why is the gold foil coming out as a bright white blob?
- Foil is a mirror. It reflects your brightest light source straight into the lens and clips to pure white. Move away from direct light, use indirect daylight, and tilt the certificate slightly until the hotspot slides off the foil area.
- Is this free and private?
- Exporting to PDF or JPG is free with no watermark and no account required. Capture and text recognition run on the device using Apple's built-in frameworks, so document images are not uploaded to a server.
Last updated 2026-07-28