One more Megan Johnson.
And this leads me to a very controversial topic.
Changing your name after you get married.
I am not a feminist. But am I a female who didn't change her name after she got married? Yes.
Am I proud of my accomplishments pre-marriage, and happy with the identity I had carved out for myself these last twenty-or so years previous to my "I do's"? Yes.
Do I have t-shirts, records, elementary report cards, camp t-shirts, softball uniforms, journals, poems, and finger-paintings that all belong to and are in some way monogrammed with my pre-married self? Yes.
And would my marriage mean anything more to me or my husband if on top of pledging my life to him for better or worse, in sickness and in health, in football season and in baseball season, and basketball season, and tennis season, and what other seasons are there??? Hmmm...Christmas season?
Absolutely NOT!
Don't get me wrong I think it is an incredibly romantic gesture to change your name. If I am truly honest, if it wasn't for the hassle of me living in Tennessee and my marriage license being filed in Seattle, I may make more of an effort to assimilate my identity to my husband's.
But alas laziness, mixed with my own sense of extreme personal pride in having alliterated initials, have led me to the other side of this topic where I firmly stand (for now) at keeping my own name.
I may be flying in the face of traditionalism and gathering grimaces from willing name shifters across the globe, but I am sticking to my guns.
And with that... let me explain the image above.
I get to have my unmarried name 365 days a year, so on the Christmas cards you better believe that I will appease the in-laws and oblige, that's one conversation over turkey and giblets that I don't want to have to have. Again.
Welcome to the holiday season. Let me introduce myself, "I am Megan Johnson."
1 comment:
My name meant a great deal to me and it was quite hard for me to want to change it. I did, but at the same time I sometimes wish that I was still the old me.
It makes sense to just keep it. It's not like you care that much less about your husband if you don't take his name. I mean for crying out loud, you are promising to love him when that beer gut gets bigger and he loses all of his hair and when life turns you both upside down. For that matter, he doesn't have to take your name so you should have that right. Right? Well, I think so. I just had tradition banging me over the head with a baseball bat and I finally gave in. Plus my name and his last name make a pretty lenghty hyphenated name.
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