I need to preface this post by saying that I consider myself to be a very independent, non-traditional girl. Even after Danny and I had been dating for years, I never sat around dreaming of my wedding dress and I certainly never, ever practiced my signature while using his last name.
This is why it was a surprise to pretty much everyone when one day in mid-December, I up and decided to head down to the local Social Security office and change my last name.
(Super sneaky picture taken from my car because I was a little scared if someone caught me taking a photo I would be arrested and/or shot on the spot.)
I suppose that I could play the whole, “Why should the woman have to give up her last name?” card. Or even the whole, “I am an independent chick – why should I lose my name once I get married?” one.
But, alas, I had actually been planning on changing my name all along. The main reason that I had not gotten around to it in the past 2.5 years can be boiled down into two reasons:
1.) I am lazy. It is a huge pain in the ass to go to the SS office, DMV, Title Agency and file all of the necessary paperwork. And don’t even get me started on calling different service providers, filling out more paperwork, etc.
2.) I did not want to have to get rid of my passport.
If I am being honest, this is 100% the reason that I held off on changing my name for so long. I never travelled internationally until our honeymoon and I was so excited to get my first passport stamp on that trip. Since our honeymoon we have travelled to Australia and Anguilla (with a stop over in St. Maarten) and I was starting to acquire a nice little collection of stamps.
I know that it is the memories from the trips that count and that I will get my old passport book back. But, I was still sad when I dropped my paperwork in the mail last week.
On the upside, now that Danny and I have the same last name, when I make reservations, no one will refer to us as Mr. and Mrs. MyOldLastName. Danny could have cared less whether or not I took his name, but, he kind of hated it when someone referred to him with MY maiden name.
So, that is the story of my long over due name change. Hopefully one day (in the not so distant future), I will get used to it and it will not feel so weird. It is crazy to me that a person can have one name their entire life and then in the span of a 10 minute visit to the local Social Security Office, it is all of a sudden different.
