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I moved to a new state and had to register the car in order to get a city parking permit. Since I had to do all that, I wanted it to be in my new name, so I got started with the name change process pretty much right after we got back from our honeymoon.

I waited six weeks after getting married to change my name and go through the process because we were buying our condo. All of our condo paperwork is in my maiden name. It's been almost 6 years and the one item I haven't changed is my Paypal account because they want to see your marriage license or something ridiculous like that.

It took ab out 5 months for me to legally change my name and then like a month afterwards to get all my documents changed.

I did not check the name change box for the marriage certificate. A year after I got married, my passport was expiring and since it's a ten year renew, I decided to just go ahead and change my name.

First, I had to go file it in court and pay a filing fee. Then, the court had to publish it in a local newspaper for four weeks to make sure there wasn't any formal objections. So I had to pay another publishing fee. Then, I had to wait until my case made it into the court schedule and that took two months. Once it was on the schedule, I had to go wait through all the hearings until they got to mine. I was in the same court as uncontested divorces and name changes. When it was my turn, I stood in front of a judge and had to explain why I wanted a name change. After he allows it and signs the paper document, I had to pay another document fee to get a notarized copy.

I then used the notarized copy to get a drivers license, social security, credit cards, passport, etc.

I changed my name ASAP after I got married because I knew we would be moving abroad within a year or so, so I wanted to have everything taken care of. I did passport first, then driver license then SS card. I changed credit cards and bank accounts after I got my passport back. It took maybe 3 months total because I didn't want to be without proper ID while documents were processing.

I changed my name within the first year we were married. My process was a little trickier because I needed to have a full legal name change due to a mistake my parents made when I was born. I had to put it in the newspaper and go to court to tell my reasoning for the name change. Glad that I did it before LO1 was born because it was a bit of a hassle.

I started the process in June (got married in October) delayed because I had visa's for traveling that I did not want to have to re-apply for. I got everything done by October when I had to travel internationally again!