The Official Business that Goes Along with Marriage
Weddings are many things. They’re fun, they’re expensive, they require a lot of planning, but a wedding is also first and foremost a legal matter. And as such, there are steps the couple must take so that the union is recognizable in the eyes of the law. They’ll need a marriage license, but before that, the bride must make an important decision – to take her future husband’s surname or continue to use her maiden name.
You’d think that a name was just a name and changing it wouldn’t be such a big deal, but it really is. During previous generations whether or not a woman changed her last name was something that wasn’t given a second thought. The woman took her husband’s name and that was that. But recently, women have challenged this tradition. There is no law that says a woman’s last name must change in marriage, so really this decision is a matter of personal choice.
