AisleDash

This week, the New York Times ran an article on couples who are searching for alternatives to the traditional post-wedding name change -- you know, where the bride takes the groom's name and becomes Mrs. Hislastname. The options used to be fairly simple: couples either went with the man's name, or kept their own names, or hyphenated (although it was almost always the wife who had to live with the cumbersome title of Ellen Mylastname-Hislastname).

The hyphen, of course, lead to the inevitable musings about what would happen when the couple's children grew up and their hyphenated son fell in love with someone' s hyphenated daughter and the grandchildren suddenly had multi-hyphenated last names.

The mind boggled.

The decision to change your name can be a difficult one. Often, name changes are motivated by a desire to be part of something special, to share a symbol of your new life together as husband and wife. If your vision of your new life doesn't include different names or complicated hyphens, you can do what one of of the couples profiled in the Times did and come up with a new name, either by combining the bride's and groom's existing last names into something new (Harris + Connors = Conris), or by opting for an entirely different name, like the couple my husband knew in graduate school who took the name Rain Water when they married.

Okay, that's a little odd. But you get the idea.

What is YOUR plan for your name?