With the wedding date hurtling ever closer, the Boy and I
have started to dread Fridays. The rest of the office gets to go home at the
end of a Friday and relax into a weekend of lie-ins, brunches, cooking
programmes and socialising. Weekends are a time when you don't need to worry
about being in a certain place at a certain time. You do things and make plans
on your own terms not dictated by work schedules or deadlines.
One of the latest things is arranging to collect/be
presented with our gifts. We went with a slightly unconventional method for our
gift list. Instead of registering with one department store and choosing gifts
from there, we built our own online gift list on our wedding website.
It means we have a little bit more work to do in keeping the links updated, and
a few of our older relatives have had to get some help in navigating the big
world wide web, but it has the benefit of allowing us to choose gifts from
different suppliers. Unfortunately, it has also meant that we don't have a
department store to deliver all out gifts to us post-wedding in one go. People
have been getting gifts themselves and therefore need to arrange a
time and/or place to hand them over.
Sometimes this has just meant an alternative delivery
address when ordering online, and sometimes people have dropped gifts off at my
parents house, or the In-Law's house. Sometimes people want to see us in person
and have us open them while they watch. The latter is the one that
I'm particularly uncomfortable with. I have rarely opened presents in
front of anyone other than my parents, my sister and the Boy. I don't
understand why people want to see me do that. Oh, and it is me that's supposed
to open presents apparently. Even though they are gifts for both of us I'm THE
BRIDE, so I must be the one to open them. It is not an experience I enjoy, and
I've never done so. I always feel uncomfortable, and feel like I'm being forced
into a show of emotional response, but I'm unsure about so I end up being
hyper aware of my facial expression. This will come as a surprise to everyone
because I do love receiving gifts, and I take great pleasure in
giving gifts also. I'm getting a little off topic, but writing that out is
the first time that I've consciously addressed those feelings and it might go a
little way to explaining my reaction to things that happened around the same
time: namely the SURNAME THING.
Most of the gifts and cards (and even a cheque kindly sent
by an Aunt and Uncle of mine who aren't able to come to the wedding) were
addressed to Mr & Mrs His Surname. You see, most people don't know that I'm
keeping my own name after we get married.
There are lots of reason's why I'm keeping my maiden name
when we get married, some of them too private for the internet (sorry guys.)
Some of them are boring and practical, like the fact that I'm already published
under my maiden name or the hassle it is to change everything from my
passport and my bank account, to my email address.
I'm just beginning to gain an understanding for
how strange some people find this notion since within a very short space of
time two different couples were informed, in passing, that I'm keeping my name.
You know that slightly odd expression, 'you could've slapped my face with a wet
kipper'? I think I might actually understand it now. I don't think they could
have been more surprised if I had just assaulted them about the head with a
smoked herring. I have to stress here that the reactions weren't negative, and
not long after they shrugged and probably forgot about it. They were
mostly confused and surprised that I wasn't following this tradition, and it's
unlikely that the though that any Bride would keep her own name would have
crossed their minds. That's how ingrained the tradition is
within our society.
This attitude was something should have been prepared for,
as I'd stumbled across an
article in The Vagenda a few weeks ago on the same subject, but from
the perspective of Mr. It's a well written and interesting article, and
although it discusses a few other things that are also ringing true
for me and the Boy, it's the name thing that's got me this week:
"But, dear readers, do you know what we rarely get
asked? Whether or not my wife will change her surname to mine. As far as I can
tell, the reason we’re not asked this is because it is almost universally
assumed that she will or, more accurately, already has – and in fact probably
rushed ecstatically to do so somewhere between kissing the bride and
consummating the union. It wasn’t just that everyone assumes that her surname
is mine – which in itself is presumptuous, if understandable – but that so much
subsequent post-wedding correspondence was addressed simply to Mr and Mrs My
Full Name. Apparently not only did my wife lose her surname in the nuptials,
but in the eyes of a lot of people she lost her first name too." SPR, The
Penis Perspective: A Wife By Any Other Name...
I wasn't prepared for how I'd actually fee when faced with a
card addressed to 'Mr and Mrs His Full Name'. I expected Mr & Mrs His
Surname, and actually chuckled a little to myself when I saw it for the first
time. We've been together for almost 10 years, and I'd be a massive liar
if I told you that I hadn't tried out Karen [His Surname] to see what my
signature would be like.* At some point I started to feel differently about
changing my name. I'm not sure when that was, or if there was any one thing in
particular that made my decision. I'd dithered for some time about keeping my
own name for my academic career, and being Mrs His Surname everywhere else. Yet
the thought of splitting myself like that, of being two different people - the
'career academic' and the 'wife&mother' - made
me incredibly uncomfortable. I began to question why and my search
for a good enough reason didn't find one. Karen [His Surname] isn't me.
That's either someone else, or a fictional character. I felt no attachment to
it, as if those two words couldn't hold my identity. Family stuff came up
and suddenly there were very good reasons, but for keeping my name
not for adopting someone else's. It might seem odd to some people, but suddenly
keeping my own name was the right choice for me. I'm not doing it for
political reasons in order to subvert the patriarchy, after all how much
difference does keeping my Father's name rather than taking on my Husband's
make to that?
When faced with a card from one of the older guests addressed
to Mr and Mrs His Full Name, I felt weird. A few days later when I
explained it to the Boy I said that I felt like I suddenly didn't exist any
more. I was a non-entity, defined only by my relationship to him. It
was a very, very odd experience, but a fleeting one. I opened the card and read
the message, addressed to us both by our first names and it went away.
The looks of bewilderment on the faces of the people when
the Boy told them that I was keeping my own name haven't faded from my mind
yet. It's still quite fresh, but it's left me somewhat baffled myself. I really
didn't think that it was still so uncommon in the 21st century.
*It turns out that because one of the initial letters is the
same as mine it just looked like I'd tacked Mc on to the beginning of my own
name.
