What’s in a Name?
Even before I got married, people had issues with my name. I’ve had folks misspell, mispronounce, and just plain misunderstand my name, and over the years, I’ve been pretty tolerant about the whole thing. After all, I figure, “Maren” is not exactly a common name, and neither is “Montalbano.” So I give folks a break and patiently wait for them to figure it out. But now that I’ve gotten married and changed my name, it’s gotten even worse, and I’m starting to get a little mad.
Before I get into this diatribe, I do want you to know that I thought long and hard about changing my name. After all, Maren Montalbano is a brand, and I’ve spent many years making sure people remember that name and associate it with me and my face. But, on the other hand, I wanted to make sure the world knew that I was someone’s wife now. I’m a Mrs., not a Ms. or a Miss, and after having addressed multiple invitations for the wedding, I realize that it’s always easier when you can write “Mr. & Mrs. So-and-So” rather than “Mr. So-and-So & Ms. Such-and-Such.”
So I hit on a compromise that MANY women take. I would keep my maiden name, but move it over to my middle name, so that I would now, legally, become Maren Montalbano Brehm. My professional name, my “stage name,” if you want to call it that, is still Maren Montalbano, and always will be. That way, if I get a check written out to Maren Montalbano, the bank won’t have too hard a time guessing that it’s really me, since both my middle and last names will be on the account. Sounds simple enough, right? Plus, it’s what the majority of women do when they change their names.
The trouble started when I went to Italy last year, and the travel agency who was arranging the tour messed up my name on the plane tickets, putting “Montalbano-Brehm, Maren” down as my name on the ticket, when my passport, which was correct, said “Brehm, Maren Montalbano.” You’d think that would be an easy enough error to correct, but I was held up at every single airport I went through on that trip because my ticket didn’t match my passport. When I tried to correct it through the airline, they said they would make a note on the passenger list, but I STILL got held up at the airport. The fine people at TSA (and the French equivalent) clearly thought that I was trying to pull a fast one on them by adding a hyphen to my name.
Once home, it actually took several tries to change my bank accounts and credit cards. One credit card couldn’t be bothered to change my name even after I sent them a copy of my marriage certificate, a letter signed by me, and a copy of my driver’s license to prove it was me, so I have since canceled the card.
The township where I live has such bad record-keeping that they not only have my name wrong, but our address wrong as well! We found out last year that the township had been sending property tax bills for years to Ray’s previous address. When we received a zoning permit for replacement of an AC unit that we didn’t ask for, I wrote the township a very detailed letter, returning the zoning permit, along with a copy of the deed to the house, our marriage certificate, my driver’s license, and asked very politely for them to change their records. This year a similar thing happened again, so I went down to the municipal offices and made sure their databases were changed (clearly they don’t share data between departments).
Earlier this year, when it came time for us to give our receipts and reports to our tax accountant, I included a copy of our marriage certificate (which states very clearly what my new name is!) so that he could file our taxes with the correct name. Our taxes came back, and every single page said “Montalbano, Maren W.” We pointed out the problem to the accountant, who said, “Just get some white-out and change the name on the papers yourself.” So I did.
Now we’re getting our tax refunds, and if that isn’t a botched up mess, too! NY State sent me a check for “MAREN MONTALBANOBREHM,” which is a new variation — pretty creative, if you ask me. NJ State sent a check made out to “Montalbano Brehm” with no reference to “Maren” at all. Now, I’m not concerned that I won’t be able to deposit these checks, but how difficult is it for people to figure this out? Haven’t women been doing this for centuries?
On the other side of the spectrum, I am singing in a concert at my church this weekend, and all the posters and flyers have been printed with my name listed as “Maren Brehm.” I know I had been a little flexible with the posting of my name in the church bulletins, since I figured this group of people, since they knew I had just been married, would expect my name to change. And my choir director even asked me how to list my name, and I had told him, “Either ‘Maren Montalbano’ or ‘Maren Montalbano Brehm.’” I think he took this to mean I didn’t mind being listed as “Maren Brehm,” and, it turns out, I do. Professionally, at least.
I do realize I’ve made it a little bit difficult by insisting on keeping my maiden name as my professional name. So, mea culpa , mea culpa , and maybe I deserve a little bit of the grief I’m getting. But there are only three names to deal with, people. Don’t hyphenate it, ask me before you put my name on an advertisement, and you’ll be fine. It’s not like I’ve got a name like Tarquin Fintimlinbinwhinbimlim Bus Stop F’tang F’tang Ole Biscuit-Barrel. Then, I think, I would be in a lot more trouble.
Filed under Bizarre, Blogging, Cranky, Wedding | Comment (0)Random thoughts
I sang at a wedding today…it was a beautiful ceremony, lovely couple, gorgeous day. But after having gone through my own wedding so recently, I now notice all the things that could have gone better had the bride & groom (or maybe the wedding planner?) thought the details through just a little bit more.
The ceremony took place outside, and the bridesmaids and brides had to traverse a very long lawn to get to the site. They did so in 4-inch stiletto heels, all of them. I almost wanted to say kudos to them, but I was too busy laughing (on the inside, of course!) as their heels accumulated rose petals like those pointy canes that pick up trash while they marched down the rose-carpeted aisle. The bride had to be held up by her parents as she walked because she kept falling into the soft ground. NOTE TO ALL FUTURE BRIDES: if you are going to get married outside, make sure you (and your bridesmaids) choose appropriate footwear.
The ceremony music was untraditional, for sure, which made me happy, because I got to sing something other than Schubert’s Ave Maria . Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for a bride who knows what she wants with regard to music, rather than the standard, "What do you suggest?" Because that’s when I end up with Ave Maria or Panis Angelicus or one of the oldies but goodies. I do like a little change now and again, just to spice things up. But whoever picked the music didn’t really think of the timing or the appropriateness of some of the selections. The groomsmen entered to a somewhat menacing Janá?ek piece played by the string quartet, and they were lined up at the front and ready to go before the piece was even halfway over. And my solo, "Ich habe genug" (Bach Cantata, BWV 82), would have been 8 minutes long before we cut it down to a mere 3′50" during the rehearsal immediately prior to the ceremony. SECOND NOTE TO FUTURE BRIDES: make sure you know what all your music selections sound like and how long everything is going to take.
Other than that, everything else went pretty smoothly. There were some problems with the wireless microphones, but I didn’t need a mic in that intimate setting, so I personally didn’t care one way or the other.
In other news, I’ve actually had enough time on my hands that I’ve been surfing around Digg.com (dangerous, I know) and came across this picture , which had the title "Never piss off an engineer." Priceless.
Getting all crafty
So I made a new friend over the past couple weeks. She’s a new addition to The Crossing, and she is fantastic! We have tons of things in common, especially the fact that we both really like to play with arts and crafts.
Anyway, she’s got this blog, and I’ve been following it and marveling at all the stamps she makes, when I realized that I make stuff like that too! Only I did a whole lot of it for my wedding, and then I stopped because I got busy…like I always do.
I showed her a project I did for my wedding last year, and she really liked it. She said she’d post it on her blog, so I said I’d put the template up on my blog for any of you who might want to do this project yourself.
This project is a wedding program that I turned into a fan (I originally got the idea because I knew it was going to be hot out there in Hawaii, and I thought, “Hey, let me stick the program on a Popsicle stick, and then folks can fan themselves during the ceremony.” But the more I worked on it and researched it, the more I liked the idea of a folding fan with panels. So I modified a template that I found on DIYBride and played around with it on Adobe Photoshop until I could get the right width and angles. It was actually tricky coming up with something that was thin enough to fold down and wide enough to hold all of the text.
Here is one panel:
I then played around in Quark Express and figured out a way to fit three panels on an 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper so that I could print it out on my printer. The font I used is Aramis, which is a free font.
This is the Quark file.
Once I printed it out on card stock (it’s been a year since I did this, so I can’t remember what weight I used! I do know the thickest weight will not go through a standard inkjet, so go at least one step down), my husband and I went through the arduous task of cutting the panels out and arranging them in order (as a side note, I didn’t think this was going to take very long…after all, we only had 35 guests! But I didn’t take into consideration that each fan had 9 panels each, so there was a lot more cutting going on in front of the TV than I’d care to admit).
We punched a hole in the bottom of each panel and then used a brad to attach all 9 panels together. We originally tried to use a grommet, but all that did was hold the pieces so tightly together that they didn’t move at all. So the next best thing was a brad, and we also threaded a little ribbon through the hole as well so our guests could swing them daintily from their wrists, if they so desired.
So there you are! Have fun.
