Changing my Name

To contact us Click HERE
Lately, Greg's relatives who can't come to the wedding have been kind enough to send us cards and checks through the mail. One thing about these is that they all come addressed and made out to "Mr. and Mrs. Gregory Brown" or "Gregory or Clarissa Brown."

Knowing as I do that this is the standard way most married couples are addressed (at least in the mind of his parents' generation), it shouldn't bother me, but it does. On a very profound level. I hate the way my name is completely subsumed in the first way, as if I have ceased to become a person upon my marriage, and as for the second - to be honest, the first time I saw it, I had a visceral reaction along the lines of "Who the hell is Clarissa Brown?" That's how disconnected I feel from that name. She is not me. And I do not think she ever will be.

I never seriously considered changing my last name. I don't know what I would do if Greg felt differently than he does - thankfully, he would never ask me to, and in fact is planning on eventually changing his to mine. But even if he did want me to change it, I don't know that I could. Some women don't think twice about it, but I am not one of them.

The difficulty will be adjusting to the fact that no matter how loudly I state it, I have a feeling that some people will never stop addressing me as "Mrs. Brown" or thinking of me that way. To Greg's elderly Midwestern relatives, that's just the way it is. But it bothers me that no one has thought to ask me how I'd like to be addressed, that no one has asked me if I've made a decision about my name. Most people have assumed I'm just going to take his.

I'm not trying to shit on women who do change their last names. It's a really personal choice, and there is no right or wrong decision. The only thing I know is that it's the wrong decision for me. And I wish it did not have to be something that I will have to assert. I wish that the letters and checks addressed to the wrong name will not be just something I have to put up with. It's as if, having made this choice, I will have to re-make it every day.