Wedding Announcements and Name Changes

Do you have a wedding website? If so, making a FAQs or More Details page and including it there seems appropriate.

A long time ago, it used to be common practice to include an "at home" card with a wedding announcement. It was a smaller card than the announcement itself, and usually said something like, "The new Mr. & Mrs. So&So will be at home at _____(new address)________, after ____(date)___." Where the date was after they returned from their honeymoon, which typically followed closely after the wedding date (and, at the time most couples didn't move to a common living space until the wedding, so it basically worked as a change of address notification for friends & family, too). You could do something similar, but with the focus on the name change: "After completing the name change process, Heather and John will be known as Mr. John and Mrs. Heather NEWNAME."

Really, I don't think it's a big deal to announce your name before the legal change is complete. It doesn't matter what people call you socially (except, perhaps, if people send you checks made out to your new names, so you may want to check with your bank). Daughter's been married three months, but thanks to the incredibly inefficient DMV here was only able to change her name on her license yesterday; friends & family have been referring to her by her new name since the night of the wedding even though legally her name change wasn't complete until yesterday.

I'm not sure how many people would visit a wedding website after receiving a wedding announcement. The only reason I'd look is if I wanted to know if there was a registry.

Hi there Heather!

Welcome to the WeddingWire community

Do you feel the need to explain why you and your FS changed your name? I think it would be sufficient to just include what will be your new name in the wedding announcement. The previous poster shared some great wording to introduce the change, i.e. "After completing the name change process, Heather and John will be known as Mr. John and Mrs. Heather NEWNAME."

If you want to include the reasons for the name change, I would keep it super brief without a lot of detail. Something such as “To celebrate our unity in marriage, we’ve decided to both change our surname to XX.”

Alternatively, once the announcements are sent out, could you explain to a couple of family members and friends the reason why and just wait for this to spread via word of mouth?

Sorry for the late response! We actually don't have a wedding website. I've always considered them to be more of a pre-wedding thing, and since we're having a micro wedding, we're keeping quiet until after. Most people don't even know we're engaged.

That being said, most of the people getting announcements don't have social media but do have working internet knowledge. I could see making a wedding website for after - pictures and name change semi-details. If they don't go, they don't go, but I think most would. Just have a line like "For pictures and name change details, go to [site]."

That could work! Thank you.

Thank you for the response! I like your wording.

I think inefficiency is one of my biggest concerns about going by the new name pre-legal change. The process takes a minimum of slightly over a month if everything's done promptly, and I'm not sure I trust the local system to move that fast. Still, I'm glad to know that going by the new name prior to a legal change isn't considered abnormal.

Thank you!

In a perfect world, I'd love not to have to explain. Unfortunately, I think people will make assumptions. I know when we got our marriage license, the probate clerk asked if we were both changing our last name because FH didn't get along with his father. And that's a random stranger who doesn't know anything about our history or wedding! If you add those things in (FH had a rocky upbringing; I actually am largely estranged from my father; we're having a micro wedding that pretty much no one knows about beforehand), I'm pretty positive people are going to assume we're changing them for some dramatic family tension reason instead of just nope, there's just already people in our close families with those exact names.

Telling my chattiest relative would probably help. That's a good idea. Thank you!