Getting our Marriage License- and my soon to be new middle name

On this Good Friday, I made it a great Friday and went with Chef to get our marriage license. After our ordeal at the DMV, I was not expecting this to be an easy process. In fact, because we were getting our license in LA, I asked my boss if I could work from home (in anticipation that it would take a long time and it sucks to drive to work to drive back and forth).

Oddly enough, it wasn't that bad of a process. We had filled out the paperwork before coming (although I literally made the middle name decision at the window) and just had to hand over our $90. The only tricky thing was that they didn't take Visa, which was our debit card backer. Chef and I thought this was a little weird, right? So, we wrote a check. No big whoop.

After a mere 10 minute wait, we were back at the window holding up our right hands and swearing that everything we'd written on the application was true. Then we scheduled our courthouse ceremony and were out the door in less than 30 minutes. Considerably less than the "at least 60 minute" wait the web site had told us to expect.

So, what did we do in the 10 minute wait? Two things:

1. Debate my middle name
2. Debate which day to get married

I chose "Clark Wrye" (no hyphen) as my "new" middle name. I just couldn't give up either name so I'll be the girl with three last names. Chef wanted me to change it to "Gray" so that I could pay homage to my dad (it's his middle name) and his Grammie (her last name) at the same time. I liked the idea, but in the end, I'm a sentimental who couldn't let go.

So, the second debate was on when we would actually get married. Well, that was a little more challenging. The Beverly Hills Registrar (yup, we're getting married in the 90210) only performs weddings every 15 minutes on Thursdays. So, it had to be a Thursday. And I wanted it to be a Thursday where I could take the Friday off too because what fun is getting married and then going back to work the next day?

We also had to take in consideration Chef's birthday. Because honestly, there has to be some space in between so we can celebrate twice. He deserves his own day and I mine. Then ours together.

So, space. That meant either we get married in 3 weeks (and I wouldn't get a Friday) or at the beginning of July. The next thing was that I'm travelling to Canada at the end of May and my passport clearly has my current name on it. I don't really want to worry about travel (even just to Canada) with all these names.

And with that in mind, we found a date at the beginning of July. Yay!

What's in a Name, anyway?

Chef and I are going to get our marriage license on Friday. We have 90 days from that point to get hitched or we have to go through the process again and pay the $90 yet again. I am currently at lunch and decided to hop on the LA County Registrar's site to see about filling out the online application for the license.

I got stumped on the first section. Not the questions about Chef, but about me. I'm changing my last name to match his. Not that hard of a decision and one I'm happy to do. Not that I don't love my identity and my last name (it's served me well for 32 years so far), but I'm tired of my poor four letters being mangled in the pronunciation. Now my new four letter last name will be mangled in an entirely different way.

That wasn't the stumper. Here's the stumper: what to make my new middle name?

I'm seriously at a loss. My current middle name is my mother's maiden name and my last name is clearly my father's name. it's like playing Sophie's Choice in reverse. Logically, I know that if I do the traditional thing and make my former last name my new middle name, it doesn't hurt my mom or her family. But still.

It doesn't feel right to keep my current middle name and toss aside my last name. Nor does it feel like "me" to go behind door number three and hyphenate them both to make a combined middle name. That just seems like more trouble than it's worth. I'm not a hyphenate-kind of girl.

So instead of filling out the form, I closed the window and started this blog post. It's not a bad thing to love so many families so much that you want to make sure you're always instantly linked as being a part of them. But hey, I've got three days to make a decision and a lifetime to second-guess it, so why am I stressing now?