Changing Bride’s Maiden Name to Married Name

Have you, the bride to be, taken time to think about changing your name to your husband’s or keeping your surname? As the bride, you are very busy planning your dream wedding. There are so many details to decide on, shop for, and coordinate, and finalize. During your engagement, you should be thinking about this important decision of whether to change your last name or not.

For the bride, this decision to change her name requires thoughtful consideration regarding career, family and financial situations. As a modern bride, you have the choice of keeping your maiden name, taking your husband’s name, joining both surnames with a hyphen, or as a professional woman choosing to use your maiden name for work and legally taking your husband’s name. You also have the option to do the opposite.

Side note: Financial counselors suggest the bride request a separate credit history to be maintained under the bride’s maiden name. We hope you’ll never need this, but they also advise it is wise for a woman to keep one or two credit cards under her maiden name to maintain a credit rating in the event she is widowed or divorced. (Also, have at least a couple of your utility bills, in addition to credit cards, in your name to maintain a credit rating under your married name.)

If you don’t want to change your last name, you don’t need to do anything. Check with your lawyer to be sure. If you choose to legally change your maiden name to your husband’s, you should start the process as soon as you return from your honeymoon.

There are several options on how you can approach this time consuming project. You have the option of just winging it on your own changing your last name as things come along, purchasing the Do-It-Yourself The Name Change Kit for Brides with Software and Planner for $29.95…plus the cost requesting a marriage certificate for either choices…to help you tackle the time consuming task, or to save you over 13 hours of tedious work, sign up with the premiere online MissNowMrs Online Name Change Servicefor $29.95 plus $4.95 for marriage certificate request. You just fill in the requested information and the service generates the letters and forms for you to print with instructions on how to file the requests.

OR

New Jersey Wedding Vendors has provided you with a list of documents and accounts below to help you make your own list and remember, you’ll need to write letters, gather addresses, make some phone calls and fill in forms.  (* denotes forms and letters generated by MissNowMrs Name Change Service to save you time.)

❏ Alumni Association
❏ Auto registration/title
❏ Bank accounts *
❏ Credit cards *
❏ Credit Reporting Agency
❏ Deeds
❏ Doctor/dental records
❏ Driver’s license *
❏ Employee records
❏ Insurance policies *
  ❏ Auto
  ❏ Health
  ❏ Home
  ❏ Life
❏ Internal Revenue Service *
❏ Magazine subscriptions
❏ Medical *
❏ Memberships
❏ Mortgage *
❏ Mutual funds/stocks/bonds *
❏ Newspaper subscriptions
❏ Passport *
❏ Place of worship
❏ Post Office *
❏ Professional License *
❏ Savings accounts
❏ Social Security card *
❏ Utility Companies *
❏ Voter registration *
❏ Living Will / Last Will and Testament

Think about how you want to tackle this project…DIY or sign up with MissNowMrs Online Name Change Service?  Click on both links and decide for yourself, but make sure you take care of changing your name as soon as you retrun from your honeymoom.