Weddingbee Blog

Wow, has it really been two whole weeks since I wrote a post? Sorry, guys! This whole “finishing up my recaps” thing has been harder than I thought. I have a couple of posts I’d like to share with you before I finish up my recaps, though, so I’m gonna take a break and work on those if that’s alright with you. We cool? I promise, I’ll throw in some pretty pictures to help keep it interesting.

One of the things I wanted to share with you is our version of the whole name change debacle. I know many lovely bee ladies before me have written on the subject, but I’m pretty sure no one has made the crazy decision we did. What can I say? We’re kinda weirdos, if you haven’t already gathered from our theater space ceremony, our subway ride in my designer wedding gown, or our choreographed Dirty Dancing throwback first dance.

We had a couple of factors working in our case:

1. We’re complete and total saps. I mean, come on, look at us:

Because we’re such saps, it was really, really important to us that we share the same last name moving forward. We’re all about creating a family together (including our two furbabies — yep, I went there!), and being able to be a true Mr. and Mrs. together was one of our priorities.

2. My name really matters to my career. Yes, I am an actress. Yes, I am a working actress. And yes, how my name sounds to people really matters. There’s a reason actors take stage names, and it’s not just vanity. As an actor, you’re basically creating a brand to be sold — YOU (or me, rather) — and your name is a big part of that brand. So, my name has to sound good. And sadly, my name doesn’t sound that great with Mr. Star’s last name. It’s a little awkward. Kind’ve like this picture:

Okay, maybe that picture is more than a little awkward. And I don’t have any idea what we were laughing about, for the record.

3. I really want to have the same last name as my kids. This goes back to the whole “sentimental sap” thing. And I know that if it’s as important as it is to me that I share a last name with my husband, that it will be even more important to me that I share a last name with my kids when there’s more of this in my life:

Isn’t my baby sister the cutest?

4. I wasn’t that attached to my maiden name and I officially have the coolest husband ever. I had no issue giving up my maiden name to create a new family with Mr. Star and he felt that it was more important for us to share a name than for him to stick with his, sooooo…

We decided to pick a totally new last name and BOTH change our names! I know, I told you we were crazy!

Shortly after we got engaged, we discussed all of these factors and we started brainstorming all of the potential new last names we might like. We started by trying to combine our two last names and woah, that didn’t work at all. So then we started looking at lists of names wherever we found them — in friends’ graduation programs, online last name databases, etc., but it felt so impersonal to just choose a random name out of nowhere.

Finally, we decided to look back into our families’ histories and put together a list of all of the last names that any of our family members went by and voila! We came across one that we both loved, that gives a hearty nod to both of our Irish heritages (O’names, anyone?), and decided to go for it!

The biggest downside to our decision is that we weren’t able to both change our names via marriage certificate like you normally would, but instead have to go to civil court to do it! One day in court down, two more to go, so keep your fingers crossed for us that it all goes smoothly! Thankfully, our families and friends have been, on the whole, very supportive of our rather unconventional decision. And we love our new family identity.

Not to mention, I love telling people that we’re both changing our names because it reminds me of why I love my mister oh-so-much — he’s just that awesome.

Did you make an unconventional name change decision? Do you know of another couple that both gave up their “maiden names” like we did, or are we the only weirdos?

*All photos by John Martin Photography *