Letters to the Editor
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LW, I think you wanna do it
Seems like you wanna change your birth name (notice I didn't say "maiden" - talk about an obsolete word) - so do it. Just do it. It is easier, no doubt. And please don't have two last names; we don't do that in this country; you have to hyphenate if you want that, and that is a PITA. I really really like having the same name as my children - for me that is the bottom line. But by all means, drop your middle name and use your birth name instead.
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Unless you love paperwork, keep your name.
When I was married, I changed my name to my husband's, mostly to get away from an easy to say but much mispelled surname. I kinda liked getting away from previous surname, buying into the whole "now I'm a grown-up" mentality that getting married at twenty two brings.
However, changing your name means you have to change it on every damn piece of paper. Ev-er-y-thing. Let's start with your driver's license, car title, and insurance. There's half a day standing in line and making calls right there.
Now pencil in time to change your social security card, health insurance info, retirement funds, and bank accounts. Oh, and make sure you do some of this stuff in order, so you have a piece of paper proving what your new name is.
Don't forget to change your credit cards, cell phone bill, name on your pet's records at the vet...remember, I said everything!
It was such a pain in the ass, that even that I'm now getting divorced (hey, we lasted fifteen years, give me a break) I'm so not bothering to change my name, because the amount of paperwork to be filed just to get divorced has used up any amount of patience I might have had for, oh say, the next five years.
If you love paperwork, checking off boxes on forms, standing in lines, making calls, then go to town. Have fun signing your new name--practice making nice loops with your new initials.
Oops, detecting divorcee bitterness emerging, but as one who was wished she was really warned about a whole lot of things, let me just say plainly that the philosophical and emotional issues connected with changing one's name get a lot less significant the more forms you have to deal with.
Good luck to you though, hon.
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Make it fun and own it
If his name is Smith, make your last name Mithsay.
This way you do not risk making him think you actually like him, and you no longer have to worry that you will evaporate into thin air.
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take the name
if you don't take his name, you're not marrying him. Everything else is feminist bullshit.
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Making a name for yourself
When I married my first husband, we decided we'd like to share a family name that didn't come from either of our fathers, since mine moved out when I was a baby and rarely saw or contacted me, and my husband's father had been physically abusive and negligent. We thought it would be lovely to have a name in common that wasn't a surname that one of us had taken from the other out of sexist convention. We chose a new surname that we both liked, and agreed that we'd use it once we married. However, Mr. X decided he liked it so much that he started using it before we married, which frustrated me because it then appeared that I had taken his name after all. Nonetheless, our friends and family all understood our commitment to creating a new life together with a new name, and our nonsexist statement was appreciated by many and meaningful to us. Of course, anyone who met us after our marriage thought I'd taken his name, so it didn't carry the same message to others that it did to us, and most people thought I'd capitulated to convention. It was, however, a lovely name that we both liked and shared.
Fast forward several years. Mr. X and I divorced amicably, and each of us has kept the new surname ever since. He moved to Europe, remarried and his new, extremely conservative wife was thrilled to take his name, and their kids all carry it now. I remarried and kept the name I'd chosen with my first husband, since I still liked it and had no desire to resume using the (very common and boring) surname my absent father had left me, and because I liked having my own separate identity. My second husband had no trouble with that, and my child (born of my second marriage) has never had difficulties because her parents have different surnames. In fact, she likes it. She enjoys knowing that people are free to keep family names that have meaning and pleasure for them (she carries her father's surname because it carries meaningful family associations, for example), but people are also free to chose names that better express them or that have positive associations, whether that means taking a partner's name, hyphenating, choosing a whole new name or keeping one's birth name. I like being a living example to my child of someone who has benefited from having the freedom to choose a meaningful and appealing identity. Having that freedom is one of the things I quite like about the U.S. (And no, my actual surname is not La Grigia.)
By the way, it was quite easy for Mr. X to change his name via the "usage method," which was acceptable for most purposes, including driver's licenses, credit cards, and real estate purchases. If you're changing your name on major government documents like passports, you need to get a court order (easy, not very expensive), or you need to prove that you've taken a spouse's surname (much easier). When I married my first husband, our new surname appeared as his on the marriage license because he had already started using it months before our marriage. (So much for my requests that he wait to respect the fact that the choice to use that name was a shared and symbolic one.)
Though I didn't like that at the time because it undercut the point of our choosing a new name together, it later proved helpful because I only had to show my marriage license to change my name on my passport rather than having to provide a court order. The fact that he was going by the new surname meant that, because of sexist laws and assumptions, I had only to show my marriage license and the government, seeing that our surname had been my husband's name, agreed that his name must automatically be mine. Mr. X had to pay over $100 to file with the court and appear before a judge with affidavits from various people proving that he'd been using the new name exclusively for over a year when he changed his name on his passport. Not a huge hassle for him, and he's still glad he changed his name as an expression of his ability to shape his own identity, but it definitely takes time and money to do it fully and completely if you're not a woman marrying a man.
Finally, just because spouses have different last names doesn't mean that society will honor each name and give each spouse equal value. My second husband and I tried filing our taxes with my surname as the primary one and his as secondary, and the IRS disallowed it. They sent official letters saying they wouldn't accept our forms if the husband's social security number and surname weren't the primary ones. Our real estate transactions were also filed under his last name by realtors and escrow companies because they use the male-surnames-are-the-only-real-surnames convention. These were workable issues, and I think it's worth it to have different last names precisely because it provides low-level reminders to the world that people shouldn't assume that married women are subsumed by their husbands' identities. Knowing what I know now, I would probably not have shared a surname with my first husband at all. For me, the pleasure and pride I take in having my own identity are worth the extra occasional confusion or hassle.