[Merry]

It has been known for church records not to make it to the GRO and sometimes (less often) even to the local reg office! There's information about this in the book 'A Comedy of Errors or The Marriage Records of England and Wales 1837-1899' by Michael Whitfield Foster (or it might be in the sequel, I don't remember). Or, of course, they might just have not married for various possible reasons, the most likely being that one of them had already been married. However, there is no indication of a marriage for either of them in the right area (I looked 1875-1885). They might still appear as single in 1881 if the marriage had failed before that date.

EDIT that book is fairly out of date now in some ways, but would probably still be interesting to people who want to know how the registration system used to work.