After the wedding
Name change, thank-you cards, photos, honeymoon and paperwork.
An introduction
After the wedding, planning stops and administration begins — and nobody prepares you for that. What is left are tasks that all look small and together take weeks: thank-yous, photographs, invoices, borrowed items, and depending on your decision a name that has to be changed at a series of places.
The most underestimated are the photographs. Weeks often pass between the day and the finished images, and then the real work begins: choosing, sharing, making an album — and settling who may show the pictures where. What happens to guests' photos is best decided beforehand, not once they are already somewhere.
And then there is the part that occurs to nobody as a task: a year of planning ends and ordinary life comes back. For many couples that is a strange emptiness, rarely talked about. This section covers both — the list that genuinely has to be worked through, and what comes after it.
How many marriage certificate copies do you actually need?
Where certified copies come from in the UK and the US, who keeps them, what they cost, and why three to five copies c...
How to choose the right photographs from 800 wedding pictures
Turn 800 images into 60 without stalling for months: a three-pass selection method, target numbers for album, wall an...
The honeymoon passport problem: travelling on a name you have just changed
In the US, book and travel on your old name and change it once you are home. The UK route, the exceptions, and the mi...
Renewing your wedding vows — and the ordinary marriage that follows
A vow renewal has no legal effect anywhere, and that is the point: the occasions that carry one, who conducts it in t...
Planning your honeymoon: when to go, how long for, and where
Leave the next day or wait a month? How long a honeymoon needs to be, how far ahead to book, and why the season decid...
Every document and account to update after you get married
Passport, licence, bank, insurance, pension: the full list of who needs to know about your new name after marriage in...
Changing your name after marriage: what to do, and in what order
Certificate first, then the government, then everything else. The order to change your name after marriage in the UK...