Happily Ever After, Guaranteed.

We’re at that age where everyone, and I mean everyone, talks about marriage and babies.

Every other picture on a social media site is of their child, whilst every other status is about their child. I have nothing against this. (If you want to post daily photos of your children onto the internet be my guest, just don’t whine because I’ve blocked you.)

With this is mind, the marriage question is a like the smell of burning refuse, it just won’t go away.

Now just because I want people to stop asking: “So, when are you two getting married?” doesn’t mean I don’t like the idea of marriage. It’s just about love and love is nice when it’s right, so celebrating it doesn’t seem like a bad idea at all. Marriage, to me, is just the celebration of love. Yes, for all sexes, ages and races. 

I’m lucky in that I was raised seeing my parents treat each other like love-struck teens. They bicker as much as they cuddle, precisely as marriage should be.

So why is it so terrifying?

1)      The Surname

On visiting one day, my dad asked if I’d change my surname if we ever got married. I said no. Why should I? It’s my surname. I like my name. No one else has my name (ok, I googled it and apparently I share my name with a Chinese actress and a French man. Who knew?).

My other half also likes his name and doesn’t wish to change it.

So I suppose that’s settled. Only not for everyone else.

Upon getting asked the same question by my friends, and answering no, my friend asked me if I “was one of those feminist types?” I had no idea how to reply. Was I a feminist because I liked my name? Is that a bad thing? Because my other half wishes to keep his name is he a masculinist? What does it matter to them?

I thought about it, a lot, and the idea that I wouldn’t have the same name as my family was heart-breaking. Because of love, you’re supposed to change your name and effectively belong to another family? I don’t think so.

At that point it hit me that I’d already been a part of the surname swap. I don’t have a hint of my mum’s surname in my own. And true, she changed hers because she didn’t have the best surname in the world. But what would she have done if she didn’t want to change? What surname would my siblings and I have? She didn’t know.

That brings us to confusion number:

2)      The Next Generation Surname

If we had a child/ children (a whole other terror) what surname would they have if we kept our own after marriage?

It’s old-school practice to give them the father’s, especially if you changed your surname to his already. But for us, this doesn’t represent both of our families and so we don’t want to do it.

Still old school but a little updated, is to give the children the mother’s surname as a middle name with the father’s surname. If every generation does this however, the mother’s surname is rooted out and the father’s remains. Not exactly fair, in my eyes.

The people who can, double-barrel. But what happens after that? What if their children meet a double-barrelled name and have their own offspring, what surname do they get, a four-way barrelled name? The barrel is a short-term solution.

For the ones who have compatible names, they can combine and make a new one for their new family. Very modern, practical and fair, for those who can.

And so that leaves us. The awkward ones, with names that need to be sounded out and get constant exclamations of: “Ooh, that’s different!”

What do we do?

If you make a deal that girl’s get one surname and boys get the other, that’s not fair to them. And what if you don’t have one of each? What if you just have one?

I have searched for the answer to this question. All I find is the same question, asked in different stages of desperation with more or less exclamation points.

For some of you, this is a genuine worry. For others, you won’t give two hoots. That’s fine. That’s what opinions are about.

But what I’m after are the solutions that people have used when faced with these questions. Did you keep/combine or double-barrel? And what did you give to your children?

In the meantime:

3)      Is It Worth It Now?

Do we really need a party, fancy-wear and permanent jewellery to prove our ‘love’?

Do we need a ‘certificate’? A certificate so old-fashioned that mum’s aren’t allowed to be a part of it. That thought saddens me and my other half, who is very much a mother’s son.

As I already said, I see it as a celebration of love.

But if we don’t like certain aspects, why should we do it? We don’t want to stand in front of everyone forgetting what to say and getting told off for giggling. We don’t want a certificate that cuts out half of our parents. We don’t want to worry about guests and food and service and flowers and other things that don’t really matter. (And I’m sure that many of you have had a wedding that went without a hitch, but I bet you still spent the better half of a year worrying about it, trying to sort everything out. Be honest now!)

In the meantime, I’ll ignore the bombardment from social media and just enjoy the time I have not worrying.

“It all comes around so quickly!” They say.

Well, we’re quite happy as we are, thank you very much.