How and where to change your name

This is not an easy process. The older you are, the more difficult it is. Not in any sort of "get married young" kind of way. When you're older, you have a job, you have your own insurance, credit cards, leases, mortgages, phone bills, lots of things in your name. When you're young, everything's probably in your parents' names, or you don't even have it yet. Either way, it's going to be a hassle. 

In a fashion similar to that of my wedding day emergency bag, I did a lot of googling to create a comprehensive list to meet my needs. The site I found most helpful was at The Examiner, and this article will be very similar.

The most important thing to note is that you will need the certified copy of your marriage license for most of these things. We went to the courthouse ourselves the Monday after the wedding. This took all of 20 minutes and we walked away with the certified copy. The other option is to hand it over to your officiant and they will mail it in to the court. It then takes 4 to 6 weeks for you to get the certified copy mailed to your house. If your documents are time sensitive (mine were), I recommend filing yourself. Otherwise, enjoy the honeymoon and don't worry about the paperwork until you get the thing back in the mail.


The obvious places

1. Driver's license (and voting registration) - Go to a licensing office with your old driver license and your marriage license. Going to a less busy location, or during non-peak times will help shorten the trip. (Lunch and closing times are the worst.) You will be given a temporary license to show your new name, in addition to your original license with the top sliced off. Bars barely notice the sliced-off card, but if you are traveling, make sure to carry both pieces of identification to prove your new name is legit at the airport. Be sure to ask that a new voter's registration card be sent to you as well. This doesn't necessarily happen automatically, so better safe than sorry to verify. (This was extra fun for me. My new license mailed to my parents' house in Texas, and they didn't want to mail it to me. I was meeting up with them in Colorado in mid-September, but I had to rent a car on my temporary license. That is an experience I do not wish upon anyone!)


2. Social Security Card - Take your marriage license and old driver license to a local social security office. You can find your nearest one here. If you don't have an hour or two to spend there, you can mail in your request. Wait until your new driver license arrives in the mail so you aren’t caught without one, then send your old driver license, along with your marriage license, and an application you can print off www.socialsecurity.gov to your local office. There are pros and cons to both options. If you mail in your marriage license, you won't have it for name changes in the mean time. The office in Dallas wasn't the most glamorous place, but the wait really wasn't so awful. Plus I got to keep all of my documents in the mean time. Bonus: Your social security number does NOT change when your name changes. That was a huge relief to me!


3. Bank Accounts/Investment Accounts/Credit Cards - You will need your marriage license for this, too. Take it along with a piece of ID showing your new name in to your local branch. If you have a joint checking account (with a parent or with your new spouse), the other person (people) on the account must also be present. I know, this is a little weird. When you change your name on the account, you have to create a new signature card. Since that is a legal document, all parties must be present, with IDs, to sign it. This was a sticking point for me as I'm in Canada and my mom (who's on my US accounts) is in Texas. Don't forget to order new checks with Mrs. on them! For the credit cards, you might have to fax them a copy of your new ID and marriage certificate. If you're like most of the people out there today, you do not have a fax machine. Never fear, there are, of course, websites for this. Just scan/snap a picture of your documents and send them through a site such as this one.


4. Work - This is a multi-part bullet point. Email your HR department before the wedding to ask what documents they will need. They might need a new piece of ID, your marriage license, and/or your new social security card. Don't forget to ask for new business cards to be printed as well. Some places will issue you a new email address as well, it depends on their system and how old it is. 

The less obvious places

1. Insurance - This includes health insurance, auto, home/renter's, life insurance, wills or last testaments. This will be a similar process as changing the name on your credit cards. That online fax service is now your best friend. 


2. Utilities/Monthly Bills - Electric company, water company, tv, internet, land line, cell phone. Some of them will want the copies of your documents, oddly, some will not. Another key thing to do here is update your payment information once your bank accounts and credit cards have been updated. Also, if you have any student loans, mortgages, or lines of credit, you'll have to contact those agencies to have them update the information.


3. Your Lease! Car title, deeds to any property - These are very important! They are legal documents. Some will tell you that they regard the law as it existed the day you signed it, keeping with the legal name you held when you signed the document. I am on the paranoid side and would hate for my old name to be an issue at any point down the road, so it's better to take care of these things now rather than have to backpedal when something comes up.


4. Passport - Some don't travel as much as others, and this is fine. Before you go anywhere, check this site for the forms you need. I needed mine immediately, which provided some difficulty. If you need same day service, here is what I recommend. Take your new pictures before the wedding. I went the week before so that I could pick them up before everything got crazy. I added them to my stack of paperwork for my Monday name-changing adventure. The tricky part is that the passport agency offices are few and far between. They'd only recently opened one in Dallas, which allowed me to get my new one. Check this list for the location nearest you. If you do not need it immediately, you can mail in your old passport with a copy of your marriage certificate. For a new passport, the process is similar, but it will take several weeks to be mailed to you.


5. Accounts/Memberships - This is a very broad topic. It covers your airline and hotel memberships, gym memberships, Angie's List, any toll tag accounts for your car. This one will have additional things that pop up over the months as you remember the last time you logged in or booked a flight. For the airline memberships, you will need to send copies of new identification and your marriage certificate. Since they deal with travel and need your full legal name, they need to verify your identity.


6. Social media accounts - This is the fun and easy part! Update your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, LinkedIn! A lot of them let you indicate previous names, which can be beneficial (particularly Facebook and LinkedIn, where people searching for you might readily know your old name).


7. Email - In the same light, your email account now needs an update. If you feel so inclined, you can acquire an entirely new address to reflect your name. At the very least, update your email signature. If you go the route of a new address, you can send a mass email to all of your contacts to let them know. You can also port your existing contact list over to your new account and set up forwarding from the old account to the new one, so you don't miss any mail. If you get a new address, be sure to update that on any online accounts you have! Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, Netflix, rewards programs!


8. Home address labels - Yay! Yall are now a pair! Here's Paper Source's site for getting a custom stamp. Their system is pretty neat. You can reuse the stamp apparatus and change out the actual stamp as you move or need to stamp something else!

There's always somewhere else or something else. Depending on who you are or the things you have, there will be something else. 

It's a lot of work. It's exhausting, since you just planned a wedding and got married, to now have to talk to tons of customer service reps and government workers. But you can do this. We all believe in you!

Changed my name in a day

I knew I had to get all the paperwork done before we went back to Canada. I carved out an entire day to make it to all the agencies.

The first order of business was to file the marriage license. I would need that at all the other locations.

Max and I learned something new that day. The clientele at the county clerk's office can vary drastically. We showed up around 11 am to request our marriage license. There were screaming children, long lines, tired employees, and couples of all ages and makeup. We arrived at 8:05 am when we were filing. No children, no lines, only 20-something business couples there exactly 30 days prior to their wedding date. Woah it was different. Thankfully, it meant it only took us 10 minutes to file our license! That was a pretty sweet deal!

From there we went to the social security office. The place opened at 9 am, so we were in line before the doors opened. It didn't take us too long to get up to a window, maybe 30 minutes. Here's where things started getting frustrating.

I had already printed and completed the form to apply for a new card with a changed name. The form had a location for a mailing address. It asks for the country. I assumed this meant that you could enter a country other than the US and have your card shipped to you.

The cranky lady at the counter informed me this was not the case. I had to provide a US address. Which is fine, I can use my parents address. But it meant I had to verbally provide the address. I was not given a chance to confirm the information. The address the card is shipping to is Lavendare, while my parents live on Lavendale. 

I asked an officer (yes, actual police officer, sent there to guard the crazies) if I had to get back in line to request a change. Yes. I would have to take another ticket. The current waiting time was over an hour. Oh. No. No no no. We'll just hope it still winds up at my parents' house. If not, I'll try again at Christmas.

It occurred to me that I might be able to call and have the information changed on a form somewhere. I dialed the number, waded through all of the select-an-options, and was told by a machine that there were currently no operators available to assist me, then was disconnected. I'm done with you, social security office. Done.

We drove through Chick-Fil-A for lunch, then set off toward the DMV. Garland has a new mega-center, and they recommend that you call ahead to get in line. The first time I called, I got a very choppy machine which I couldn't understand. The fifth time I called, I was finally able to understand the machine, only, this time, their system wasn't processing any of my selections. No matter how many times I pressed '2' for get in line, the machine kept repeating the entire list of options to me. Fine. It was still only 10:30 am, so the line shouldn't be too awful.

Once I got in line, I had a 42 minute wait. Not awful. Max had finished eating his Chick-Fil-A and made it inside. I mentioned that he still hadn't gotten his license replaced since his parents moved. He went back to the entrance to get in line for a license. His wait was 30 minutes behind mine. That's alright, we've got the time. 

The new mega-center is really nice. It's clean, it's large, they are very efficient. However, the place is freezing. It's seriously just insanely cold! Max was even cold! That never happens!!!

The time passed fairly quickly. The folks working there get way too personal way too quickly. The gal who helped me told us all about her daughter's wedding and asked about Canada and it was more interaction than I'd ever desired to have with a DMV employee. 

Then it was another 30 minutes before we were called for Max's new license. This gal was a little less chatty, but still asking the tough questions. It didn't help that we were hitting a real low energy point.

We'd had a long weekend!!! We'd been busy!!! And now we're sleepy! Leave us alone!

We made it out of there right around 1 pm. I had an appointment at the passport office for 2, but we figured they could let us in early.

Wrong. Of Course. As with everything else so far that day.

The passport office is in the courthouse downtown. We went through security and up the bank of elevators for floors 9 to 15. There's only 15 floors. I really don't understand why they had two banks. Whatever.

We walk in the office and the officer (again... officers...) asks if we have an appointment. It was 1:30 pm by the time we'd made it there, but he informed us we would have to come back at 1:45 pm for our 2:00 pm appointment. I asked if we could just sit on some of their chairs. No. But, there's a cafeteria on the 6th floor that we could go sit in. If we took the elevator down to 9,  which is the floor that connects to the other elevator bank, then take the other bank of elevators down to the 6th floor. 

I just.

Can't we.

Please?

No. To the 6th floor we went. I was thirsty. There were vending machines. The one that only dispensed water was out of order. The one that had one spot for water was out of water. :( I just want to be done.

So all of 5 minutes later we went back up to the 11th floor via the 9th floor. Ridiculous. 

Then we learned about the process. The officer let us in this time. We proceeded to the check out counter. She wants to see all of your paperwork. She does not verify that any of your paperwork is correct, necessary, or all present. She does however check your application form. This fabulous government agency also asks you which country they should mail things to. So, in another desperate attempt, I put in our Canada address. Friendly little check in gal tells me I have to put a States address. I insist that "Country (if not the US) should not be on the freaking paper work. She informs me that I'm "not wrong." Thanks. I was incredibly worried that I was wrong about this fact.

She paperclips it all together and gives you a number. Then you sit and wait for your number.

Since handy dandy check in lady doesn't actually look at the documents you hand to her, folks can spend 30 minutes at the next window. Or they can spend 2 minutes there if the kind citizen bothered to check online and verify the required documents. But, you know, to each their own.

45 minutes later our number was called. Thank goodness. We approached the counter. The employees sit behind BULLET PROOF GLASS. WHAT HAPPENS HERE?!!!? WHAT?!!!! 

I pass through all of my documents. Since I knew what I needed and had everything in order, it took all of 2 minutes for her to put all of my information into the computer. 

Now.

NOW we have to wait "no more than an hour" for them to print the new passport.

But, it's already 2:38 and even if we're just using the bathroom out in the hall, the doors lock at 3 and we will not be allowed back in.

Working hard here in this government agency.

Exactly 59 minutes later my passport is ready. The office has emptied and there are only 3 of us left. 

But now we're done.

And my name is officially Catherine Ann Burgess.

So that's pretty great.