338 marriage licences filed in Wake County (Raleigh) only have reached us in the last 30 days. On the record, couples here marry a median of 16 days after the licence is filed, and nine in ten within 43 days — so most of those weddings are still to come.
Read that precisely. We do not hold anybody's wedding date in advance — there is not one forward-dated ceremony in our North Carolina records, and there never has been. What we hold is the licence, which is a public filing, and a lead-time distribution measured on 2,628 past records. Everything below is one of those two things. Nothing is a schedule.
Licence filings received so far in each window, then the weekly rate taken from a settled window — the 90 days ending August 15, 2026, old enough that ninety percent of it has reached us. The recent columns are the useful ones for lead generation and the settled column is the one to quote.
| County | Last 7d | Last 30d | A week (settled) | Newest filing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wake | 26 | 338 | 119.5 | Sep 21 |
“Withheld” means that county filed fewer than 25 licences in the settled 90-day window, so a weekly rate from it would be noise rather than a number. The raw counts are still shown.
Measured, not assumed. We took every North Carolina record at least 180 days old — long enough for the signed licence to be returned to the clerk and scraped — and subtracted the licence date from the recorded ceremony date. n = 2,628.
| Share of couples married within | Days |
|---|---|
| 25% of couples | 6 |
| Half of couples (median) | 16 |
| 75% of couples | 29 |
| 90% of couples | 43 |
| 95% of couples | 51 |
100% of these ceremonies fall within 60 days of the licence. That is the statutory limit: N.C.G.S. § 51-16 gives a North Carolina licence 60 days — “you are hereby authorized, at any time within 60 days from the date hereof, to celebrate the proposed marriage” (read 2026-09-22). The data reproducing the statute is the strongest check we have that the two date columns mean what we think they mean.
A couple who filed a licence yesterday has, on this evidence, about 16 days before the ceremony and a 6-to-43-day window around it. In that window they still need an officiant, and often a photographer, and sometimes rings, flowers or a room. By the time the wedding is announced anywhere else, that window has closed.
That is the only claim being made here. It is not a promise that any particular couple is shopping, and it is not a list of people who want to be contacted — it is a public filing with a measured clock attached to it. Roughly 31% of matured records show a ceremony on the licence date itself, so a share of any recent batch has already married.
Nobody is listed here yet — we would rather show you an empty slot than a directory we padded out. One officiant and one photographer per county, shown on this page. If you work courthouse weddings in Wake County, tell us and we will put you in it.
Ask about the Wake County slot →Initials only — that is the line on every public page here. The expected window is the licence date plus 6 to 43 days — the 25th to the 90th percentile of the measured distribution above, not a date anybody told us.
| Couple | County | Licence filed | Ceremony expected |
|---|---|---|---|
| I. D. C. & T. W. | Wake | Sep 21 | Sep 27 – Nov 3 |
| N. L. B. R. & G. A. J. | Wake | Sep 21 | Sep 27 – Nov 3 |
| C. B. M. & P. C. G. L. | Wake | Sep 18 | Sep 24 – Oct 31 |
| W. M. T. & W. R. T. | Wake | Sep 18 | Sep 24 – Oct 31 |
| C. C. D. & L. E. J. M. | Wake | Sep 18 | Sep 24 – Oct 31 |
| M. R. & S. R. T. | Wake | Sep 18 | Sep 24 – Oct 31 |
| K. P. M. & J. K. M. X. | Wake | Sep 18 | Sep 24 – Oct 31 |
| B. S. M. & N. A. B. | Wake | Sep 18 | married Sep 19 · recorded |
| H. G. A. I. & G. K. M. | Wake | Sep 18 | Sep 24 – Oct 31 |
| B. N. M. & B. M. S. I. | Wake | Sep 18 | Sep 24 – Oct 31 |
| A. E. M. & M. M. L. | Wake | Sep 18 | Sep 24 – Oct 31 |
| R. H. & M. J. J. | Wake | Sep 18 | Sep 24 – Oct 31 |
“Recorded” appears only where the clerk has returned a ceremony date later than the licence date. A record whose ceremony date equals its licence date is not shown as a wedding: for a freshly-scraped filing that value is a placeholder, and treating it as a ceremony would put a wedding on a couple who has not had one.
Subscribers see the full list — names, county, licence date, any recorded ceremony date, filterable by county and date window, with a CSV export. Open the subscriber feed or start the 7-day trial.
In our records the middle half of couples marry 6 to 29 days after the licence is filed, with a median of 16 days and 43 days covering nine in ten. 100% of ceremonies fall within 60 days of the licence. Measured on 2,628 records old enough for the ceremony to have been returned to the clerk — at least 180 days. A further 31% of matured records carry a ceremony date equal to the licence date and are excluded from those percentiles, because for a recently-filed record that is a placeholder rather than a same-day wedding.
Yes — 60 days from issue, under N.C.G.S. § 51-16: “you are hereby authorized, at any time within 60 days from the date hereof, to celebrate the proposed marriage”. Our data agrees: 100% of measured ceremonies fall inside 60 days.
338 have reached us so far. That is not the final figure: we model that 56.5% of a 30-day window has arrived by this point, because clerk records reach us with a median lag of 9 days and a 30-day-old filing is only 83.3% likely to have landed. For a rate you can rely on, use the settled window: Wake County runs about 119.5 licences a week.
Not on this page. Public pages show initials only. The county, the licence date and the expected ceremony window are public here; full names, the licence date and any clerk-recorded ceremony date are in the subscriber view with a CSV export.
No. It covers Wake County (Raleigh) only — 1 of North Carolina's 100 counties have ever filed into our records. Nothing here should be read as a North Carolina total.
Upcoming weddings in Ohio · Upcoming weddings in Georgia
All North Carolina county marriage-licence pages · What we cover, county by county · When is wedding season in Texas?