Back when this happy couple got married, there wasn’t a lot of question about how they would be addressed socially or professionally in the aftermath. The bride would take the groom’s name, period.
Sure a few famous women – mostly movie stars and novelists – might continue to use their birth names professionally, but for most women marriage spelled the end of any professional life that might require continuity of address. She might get a job, particularly once the children were in school, but she wouldn’t have a profession. And even if she did have a profession, her professional identity would change to suit her social one.
Today, though, there are a lot more options. You can follow the traditional form. You can hyphenate. You can simply go by the names you used before you got married. You can both change to something completely new. You can go socially by your husband’s name and professionally by your birth name. I even knew one woman who kept her own name socially but used her husband’s professionally. She was a kindergarten teacher and the kids found his last name easier to pronounce than hers.
The decision, as I have said many times before, is entirely up to the two people getting married. Whether you’re a traditionalist or a same-sex couple that can’t abide the idea of one of you being the ‘bride’ and one the ‘groom’ no matter your gender and feelings about your names, though, one thing is for sure: today you cannot assume that everyone will know what choice you have made.
So how do you get the information across to your entire social circle?
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