This seemed outrageous to me too as I was looking through indexing, but I looked into it a bit more and it didn't really cost $1250 to get married. It was a marriage BOND and was void if the marriage was performed legally. In other words, if it was found out that the marriage couldn't be legal (like they were already married, were related, etc.) then the bond would have to be paid. Using Tennessee Marriage Records | J. Mark Lowe