This Project: Name Changing blog isn’t proving as popular ( with readers or the writer) as Project: Life Changing did. Mr TGTBT and I were discussing the reasons for it and concluded it is because A) It doesn’t have enough edge-of-your-seat-drama because B) Everyone already knows the ending. Unlike Project: Life Changing which was written when I had no idea of how things would turn out, this blog is more of a running commentary of activities most people already have T-shirts for.
People like drama but unfortunately there is little drama to be had in your average, run of the mill wedding. This is not Eastenders, so I doubt very much that I will fail to turn up at the church having at the last minute decided that after years of turning him down I have finally agreed to marry Colin Firth (and Bridget Jones can bugger well off because I saw him first) (Colin, if you’re reading, I’m so sorry but after 32 years enough is enough.). It is equally unlikely that Mr TGTBT will fail to turn up because he has eloped with the Best Man, wanting nothing more than to spend loved -up weekends snuggled up on the sofa sharing gherkins and pretzels watching Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo, the box set.
I only have myself to blame. I started off with the wrong blog. Because at the heart of the reason for beginning this blog is not the wedding, but the name changing. Do I or don’t I? It seems quite normal in an off-hand way to change your name when you’ve only owned it for 20 or so years. And it seems equally as easy to not change your name when your political views make you think of doing so as letting down the sisterhood and giving in to patriarchy.
But I am getting married for the first time at a time in life when my peers are either getting divorced or have no more time for philosophical pondering because their diary is rammed with school pick-ups, ballet classes, dental appointments, birthday parties and the occasional date night to remind themselves of how it all began. I am getting married when I have owned my name for well over forty years and although my diary management has been tested to some degree with Pipsqueak, it will never be rammed because I still can’t drive and the dogs aren’t very good at ballet. I am getting married at a time in life when the concept of sisterhood is little more than a distant memory of alcohol infused rages against the opposition that I am now, so to speak, in bed with.
So do I or don’t I? Pipsqueak has, of late, taken to referring to me as AJ-soon-to-be-Mrs TGTBT. (Actually she uses my real name and combines it with Mr TGTBT’s real name, but you get the idea.). So perhaps I should take a leaf out of her book and, post point of no return, thereafter refer to myself as Mrs TGTBT formerly known as AJ. Or perhaps, formally known as AJ? I also – in retrospect, unwisely – mooted the double-barrel option and Mr TGTBT came over like a Susan (as in sulky, with a capital ‘s’). His reasoning is too sweet and too soppy to be of any benefit to this particular blog, suffice to say that the preliminary flouncing was all the more endearing for it. Besides. If you double barrel our names one way it sounds like a location and if you double barrel it the other way the syllables don’t flow. And I am so not going to be an even more precise location than I currently am.
On discussing this very issue with Mrs AppleG-hyphen-B, who is unofficially double barrelled up to the eyeballs, I discovered she reserves the right to choose her name as it suits. If being married to Mr AppleG-hyphen-B (official owner of the B) sometimes seems more penitential than it has a right to be, then Mrs AppleG-hyphen-B drops the ‘ -hyphen-B’ like a distasteful potato. It is then re-instated after a suitable period of time has elapsed in which Mr AppleG-hyphen-B can reflect on his sins. (Mr AppleG-hyphen-B doesn’t know this. He has led himself to believe that he is the bestower of the B and it seems kinder to let him enjoy his fantasy: to undeceive him would be akin to denying the existence of the tooth fairy to a gappy seven year old.).
So I close this blog with thanks to Mr & Mrs AppleG-hyphen-B. For be it fantasy or reservation of right, I now have a nomenclative naughty step on which to sit as I continue to ponder on Mr TGTBT’s sweet and soppy reasoning. And what it means to say “I do.”.
Yours, with less than three months to go, AJ x
Project: Name Changing 