The Real Bride
To take your husband’s name or not – that is the question!
So we all know how it goes, you meet, fall in love, get married and then you become (in my case) Mrs Harris. Or do you?
Before I got engaged, I must confess I knew virtually NOTHING about the process of planning a wedding and making decisions on everything that goes hand in hand with it. There had not been a friends or family wedding for me in pretty much forever, though this drought has since been quelled with more than half a dozen weddings since our engagement.
In the last 18 months what I have come to realise is that weddings these days are anything but traditional – they are, wonderfully, whatever you want them to be! Be it a woodland fairy theme, a nautical sailor theme… I’ve even seen a graveyard theme on a blog! And, whilst certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, I love how the wedding day has become less about tradition and more an expression of the couple’s creativity and personality to become a day that is truly personal to them.
Which brings me back to the topic – as weddings these days are typically untraditional, should the bride still take the groom's name? In countries like Spain women don't change their name when they get married and when their children are born the child gets two surnames, one from each parent. I'm not saying we should change the whole system and do this instead but maybe there's something to it.
Double barrel names certainly seem to be on the rise in the UK and gaining in popularity
By Natasha O'Hara