changing my name

Six ways to tell that you’re no longer newlyweds

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1. People no longer congratulate you for getting married
The world has moved on. If people say congratulations to you now it’s because they’re astounded that you’ve managed to show up on time, or they like your choice of cardigan or because you’ve managed to clean your teeth without spilling any on your clothes (an achievement very much deserving of applause). And if they do congratulate you for having a spouse, it’s not for marrying them in the first place, but the fact that – in spite of your passive aggressive approach to deciding whose turn it is to take the bin out – you’ve managed to keep hold of them for a whole nine months since.

2. You haven’t been given a new piece of crockery for months 
When you first get married you can’t move for plates, vases and ramekins laced with kind wishes for your future happiness from your nearest and dearest (as well as, in the latter item’s case, a legitimate excuse to eat nothing but chocolate mousse until your first anniversary). But the gifts have to stop some time. How many snack bowls can one couple realistically own? And when they do, you realise that you’re now going to responsible for replacing each and every one after you inevitably overfill the dishwasher and break them. It’s just a matter of time.

3. Remembering your new surname is now just another piece of admin
When you first get married, you can’t say your new surname without giggling. Every poor bastard who has the misfortune to serve you in a bank or a takeaway has to endure the “Oh sorry, it’s just I got married recently and I can’t seem to remember who I am!” banter that you think is hilarious but that they think is tedious. (Though, to be fair, you’d think the people at the takeaway would be on first name terms with me by now. I guess they must just call me: Number 6, 54 and a sticky rice.) But now that you’ve got used to it, your main concern is just getting people to spell it correctly. When my surname was Reeve I’d say: “It’s Reeve like Superman!” And now that I’m Buxton I say: “It’s Buxton like the water!” Because even though I’m married, I am still FUN.

4. The honeymoon period is over
As I said in this post, when you’ve been together for more than eight years, it’s not realistic to expect the honeymoon period to last any longer than the honeymoon itself. You’re under no illusions about what you’ve signed up to – he knows you consume an unhealthy level of processed cheese, you know that he consumes an unhealthy level of ball-based sport – so there are few surprises that married life can bring. And so once you’ve returned from the honeymoon, finished the last of the champagne and changed your name on Facebook, it’s not long before you’re back to discussing whether there’s room for a toilet roll holder in the downstairs bathroom. (Unfortunately the answer is no but I think our marriage is strong enough to get through this.)

5. Millions of other people have got married since you did 
Despite what you might believe when you’re planning the wedding and swearing you’re the first person in the entire world to ask your guests to place the cards they’ve kindly written for you into a vintage birdcage (even though you saw the idea on Pinterest), you are not the only person to have come up with the idea of getting married. And though it might be tempting to show up at other people’s weddings wearing your own gown, just to prove that it still fits, please don’t. Paying to have that thing dry-cleaned twice would be madness.

6. People have even stopped asking when you’re going to have children
When you first get married, people feel a strange compulsion to ask when you’re going to start a family. Heaven forbid you should just enjoy the first few months of married life in front of the television with a bag of cheese puffs – no, you must start creating miniature versions of yourself, post-haste! But after a few months, they stop asking. And it’s either because they realise that the inner workings of your marital affairs is actually quite a personal subject, or everybody’s just got distracted by the World Cup. Either way, enjoy the silence while it lasts and get tucking into those cheesy snacks. Something tells me you’ve got just the bowl for them.

How’s married life? Exactly the same.

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Charlotte and Leon 2013_ Ceremony Photograph _68Aside from “When are you going to have a baby?”, “Are you pregnant yet?” and “Will you name your firstborn after me?”, “How’s married life?” is the question I get asked most frequently.

I don’t know what people think will happen when you get married but, in my case at least, it hasn’t changed anything at all. Sure, I got a new surname and now spend most of the day trying to remember what I’m called, and I had a ring put on my finger that has to stay there forever or the world with explode (or something like that) but otherwise things are just as they were before.

But that’s a good thing. And here’s why:

1. That’s why you got married in the first place
Getting married means: I want to be with you as I know you for the rest of my life. It doesn’t mean: marry me and then immediately change into somebody else to help keep things interesting. The fact that you get to spend your life with somebody exactly as you find them (with perhaps just a few small wardrobe improvements) is one of the main reasons marriage is so popular. There’s that, the fact that you no longer have to pretend to like nightclubs, and knowing that there will always be someone there to help you take the bin out.

2. You’ll face enough change together as it is 
Life is full of surprises – some of them good, such as the release of Cadbury’s Pebbles (have you tried them? They’re delicious) and some of them bad, like when Coronation Street gets cancelled because of sport. But that’s OK because whatever comes up, you’ll take it on as a duo, so the least you can do is remain the one consistent thing in each other’s lives. If you got married, changed into different people and then ITV altered its television schedule, do you really think you could handle it?

3. If you were going to change you’d have done it by now  
Remember all those hours you put in at the start of the relationship? The showers, the shaving, the pretending to be up for watching Transformers when you’d have preferred to just stare at the cinema ticket for two hours instead? Couldn’t keep that up for too long, could you? No, after a few months you settled into being real people – with opinions that differ! And bad habits you refuse to change! Like his inexplicable love for leaving boxer shorts in the middle of the bathroom floor Every. Single. Morning! And if you thought marriage was going to change any of that, I’m afraid that you were mistaken. Marriage changes nothing, it just means there will be somebody there to comment on all of your faults for the rest of your life.

4. It’s OK that you don‘t have any news 
You have to accept that from the moment you said ‘I do’, you became the least interesting people in the world. Whilst the engagement is all “Oh my god!” and “How did he do it?!” and “How many strippers do you want on your hen do?”, your marriage will only spark a reaction if you co-create a human or start asking your friends to put their keys in a bowl when they arrive at your house for a dinner party. So it’s best to just take advantage of those first few months – sit back, relax and enjoy being out of the limelight. And if the only news you have to share is that you’ve started watching Modern Family or that you’ve discovered that ten is the optimum number of marshmallows to have with a hot chocolate, then so be it.

So if you want to have an interesting conversation with a newly-wed, don’t ask them what married life’s like, ask them what’s good on telly at the moment or what snacks they can recommend – they’ll have so much more to say. And if you think you can see a bump forming around her middle, I recommend checking the bin for sweet wrappers before putting yourself forward as a namesake.

Marriage: Why I’m changing my name

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IMG_1226I’ve decided to change my name when we’re married.

Not Charlotte – I’ll stick with that for at least a little bit longer (Nothing Good Rhymes With Petula would be a terrible name for a blog) – just my surname for now.

With the guest list a close, migraine inducing second, this has been the hardest decision on the marriage planning list. Yes, it was tricky choosing which heel would look most profound with my dress, and which flowers would best complement the venue’s exquisite wooden beams, but deciding how my post would be addressed for the rest of my life has been a little more taxing.

I have changed my mind more times than I do when looking at a restaurant menu. Sticking with Reeve is the equivalent of ordering a nice safe steak – familiar, medium rare, and only likely to cause problems if spelt with an ‘s’ on the end (I can no more stomach two steaks than I can being referred to as ‘Reeves’). Whereas changing to my new, married name is like selecting a Bouillabaisse. Sure, I know how to spell it (thanks to Google) but I’ve not grown up with it. Will I still look and feel like me when I’ve got it?

The only way to make this kind of decision is by listing the pros and cons of each option. To be Mrs B or not to be Mrs B – that is the question:

Reasons TO change

1. A post wedding project
The wedding is over, the honeymoon is complete, the gifts are all unwrapped and the cards are gathering dust – what the hell do I do with myself next? Bake a quiche and enjoy marital bliss? Take the Volvo I imagine will automatically appear on the drive as soon as we say ‘I do’ for a spin?

Changing my name will give me a nice meaty project to get my teeth into. I will have to ring everyone – the mortgage people, the council tax people, the trillion companies behind all the shop clubcards that prevent my purse from shutting… I’ll have a whale of a time. And I’m sure they’ll all want to hear how the wedding went too.

2. Bye bye school
When I was at school, I’d have liked some time off being Charlotte Reeve. She was deeply uncool (conjugating French verbs was one of her hobbies) and pleased if she just managed to get through the day without anyone laughing directly in her face.

So changing my name can be the final stage in shaking off my teenage years and rebranding as the new, super trendy, adult Charlotte, free to conjugate without judgment. Oui, elle peut.

3. They will never find me
Hey, people I grew up with! You know how you think it’s hilarious to find pictures from when we were kids with bad hair and ocean sized eyebrows, and upload them to Facebook and tag me in them? Well, if I change my name then you’re going to have to work a lot harder to find me, and I’ll have an excuse to just point blank deny that the fruit bowl-haircutted creature in the photo is me. If only they’d invent a ‘I hope your scanner explodes’ button…

Reasons NOT to change

1. Admin
While some people might call the process of changing your name a ‘project’, others would deem it an administrative nightmare. Changing my name means calling every mug with the keys to my money, my right to travel, and the ability to give me points in exchange for the use of my own shopping bag, and then waiting by the letter box in the hope that an avalanche of newly printed plastic arrives. For someone who hates being on hold as much as I do, sticking with Reeve would be a wise decision.

2. A comedy of errors
I have had some phenomenal variations of my surname over the years: ‘Charlotte Rave’, ‘Mr Charlotte Greeve’ and my most recent favourite ‘The Charlotte Reeve’ show that even the simplest name can send a mailing system wild. I have put so much energy into getting people to understand that my name is Reeve not Reed, Breathe or Steve that I’m not sure I can take another one on.

3. Sorry, are you talking to me?
Deciding to be referred to as Mrs is one thing, but remembering to answer to it is another. I can just imagine: My name will be shouted into the dentist waiting room, or over the tannoy at the supermarket ham counter, and I’ll be looking around gormlessly for its owner to come forward before catching a glimpse of my new Clubcard and realising it’s me. Remembering to respond when called will be just another thing to add to my ‘To do’ list.

It’s a tough one to call.

And I’ve really battled with it. The main reason I thought I’d stick with my maiden name is because I worried that changing wasn’t a very feminist thing to do. Surely we can just be called whatever we like and still be married? I could change my name to Forrest Gump and still be his wife ’til death do us part if I wanted, couldn’t I? (Though I fear getting through passport control could be a struggle.)

And that’s quite right. But, in my case, that is precisely why I am changing. Because I want to and, as a wise friend gently reminded me, feminism is about women deciding what happens to them so I won’t be kicked out of the club just yet.

And anyway, I think it’s worth changing, if only for the anecdotes I’ll gather during the process. If my experience as a Reeve is anything to go by, I’ve got some interesting post coming my way.