Every time I get married, the bride to be always brings this up. Something along the lines of, "Do you want me to take your last name?" I always answer the same, "I don't care. The important thing is you said yes."
I know. Cheesy as hell. But, it's what I do. And sometimes the cheesiness pays off in party favors.
But, it's got me to thinking. Why do we expect the woman to change her name? If this is a heterosexual custom then what to homosexuals do? Does anyone, in a homosexual marriage, change their last name?
If my next ex-wife were to ask me to take her surname what would my response be? I personally think I'm too lazy to change my last name so I wouldn't do it.
Well, unless her last name was really cool. Like Scream. Or Taz. Or IdiosyncrasiesRUs. I'd be Gar Scream. I'd probably start writing it out all as one word. I'm GarScream. I'd feel like a transformer. Except I wouldn't be able to transform. And where would the fun be in that?
This, of course, led me down the path of everyone changing their last name and I've decided I'm going to recommend it to my daughters. When they get married they should marry someone who is willing to come up with a new last name.
When you get married you are bringing two people together to create a new family so you should create a new last name and everyone should accept it. No more expecting one person to accept the last name of the other! If Mister Smith marries Miss Jones, they could become the Smoneses. Or the Skreams.
Some friends of mine in Eugene approached this issue in an interesting manner. They each kept their own names, but the question remained: What surname should the children have? To answer this question, they held a soccer match between the bride's party & groom's immediately after the wedding. The kids would get the surname of the winner of the match.
ReplyDeleteI've always really liked that solution. I suppose in the case of those not athletically inclined, you could resort to other competitions such as croquet, jarts or hotdog eating.