Warning! This isn’t a blog post about traveling or moving to a new city. This is a wedding-related post and it is also an opinion piece: MY opinion #ShockHorror #DontJudge #NoPhotosInThisPost #YesIAmHashtagging.
Gordon and I consider ourselves to be a 21st couple. We lived together before we were engaged, we both work full-time as professionals in demanding fields and all household expenses are shared 50/50. Both of our opinions carry equal weighting and all decisions are made in consultation with each other (except the honeymoon location – that he needs to keep a surprise). But with some things I am traditional. He had to ask for my parents’ permission to marry me although I never told him this (good boy – he knew) and I want a traditional wedding with some tweaks because they look fun. I am also taking his surname. Yes, a self-proclaimed independent 21st century professional working woman is giving up her identity. What a load of c$%p.
I am not getting married for religious reasons – I was raised in a mixed religion household where I was whatever religion suited me at the time (simplified explanation: being Anglican got me into a very good private school and being Jewish gives me a German passport both of which got me to where I am today). I am getting married because I want to make a promise in front of every person who means something to me and I therefore respect that I will love Gordon for the rest of my life and I will be loyal to him and to us, no matter what. If God/Buddha/The Flying Spaghetti Monster bless us in the process then that’s great. The more who witness it the better. I am not getting into this marriage so that my father settles a debt with Gordon’s father or for us to breed a superior race of humans and therefore cure cancer. I am doing this because I love him and I’m going to spend the rest of my life with him as his partner. As a bonus, I get a new surname.
I will always be a Gans* and I will still be on the Gaggle of Geese whatsapp group that my immediate family has. For about a week I thought about getting a tiny tattoo somewhere of a goose but that means getting a tattoo which is something that I will never do. My legal surname will change but my email address will remain. Gordon has said a few times that he feels honoured that I would change my surname to his but for me it’s part of the Wedded Couple Package.
A friend of my parents’ kept her surname and she apparently found that it became awkward once their child was at school and people would ask why the child’s parents have different surnames – people assumed that they were divorced or never married. South African society is quite conservative about things like this – in NL people often don’t get married and it’s accepted by society as being as normal as being married. Our future as we currently see it is in SA but this is not the reason I’m taking his surname. Yes it means fewer discussions and raised eyebrows when we drop the kids off at school or birthday parties but that is an added bonus.
I know people who kept their surname for professional reasons but at age 27 I haven’t sat on the board of a Fortune 500 company so my name is not that important for my career – potential employers will still need to look at my CV to determine if I’m the right candidate and I haven’t worked at a company (until now) where if you ask for references and say “Louise who worked in Finance” the company doesn’t know who that is. My current employer is a huge global company but I’m here whilst changing my surname so my manager/HR will know me by both names.
My manager kept her surname when she married but she said changing it would have meant going from one long complicated name beginning with an S to another. And she said she was just too lazy to change it (I gather that it’s not an automatic thing in NL whereas in SA it is).
I could double-barrel the old and new surnames but someone once told me that double-barreled names meant there was a divorce in the family at some stage. I have subsequently learnt that this is not the case and in fact it indicates a marriage but I still can’t get the idea out of my head that I would be creating the perception that I was divorced. This is a good example of my stubbornness – I know my reasoning is wrong but I’m so set in my ways that I can’t overcome the thought.
So, then, why am I changing my surname from a 4-letter single syllable one to an 8-letter 3 syllable one with awkward capitals in the middle? I have 2 passports, a driver’s license (soon to have one for NL as well), an ID, 2 current bank accounts, 2 credit cards, a property plus all that goes with that and all of the usual bills and accounts that currently say Gans. It will be a nightmare to change all of these so why not just stay as I am? These are all just things. They do not define me. My current surname is simple and I enjoy the Dutch pronouncing it in Dutch – they will probably panic when they see the new one. To me, getting a new surname is one of the few traditional things that I’m doing in amongst the sea of New World things that I do every day.
I will miss Google automatically translating my NL internet banking name to LT Goose and Gordon’s silly laughter whenever he calls me Lieutenant Goose. I will no longer Google my name and see a New York Acting Chief Justice’s name but rather a freelance translator. I am looking forward to the day when someone calls me Louise Gans and I have to correct them. They will immediately know that I have married and I will quietly think to myself that I am still Louise Gans but I am also Louise McTavish. Mostly, I am still myself.
*Gans in German and Dutch (and some other languages) means Goose in English
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