"Tips for Unconventional Name Changes
Changing your name after marriage is a big decision, but it doesn’t need to be a complex process—even if you’re taking a nontraditional route.
Mandy Shunnarah"
Such an interesting story about our beautiful bride, Tiffany and her husband.
"Tiffany and Gabriel agree, though they chose a different method of combining their names after marrying on June 4, 2022.
“You’re already combining your families, why not combine your names too?” says Tiffany, née Scheer and now Tiffany Scheer-Scherer. Both names are pronounced the same and are homophones with “shear.”
When she and Gabe (née Scherer) first started dating, Tiffany thought he was joking when he closed out his tab at a bar and gave his last name.
“I was like, ‘I didn’t give you my credit card. What do you mean Scheer?’ He said, ‘That’s my last name.’ What? We have the same last name?” Tiffany says, laughing as she recalls the story. “We’re definitely not related. We checked.”"
"The Scheer-Scherers are still in the process of legally hyphenating their last names. New procedures due to COVID have added some challenges to the process.
“You have to send everything in through mail––passport, driver’s license, Social Security card, everything––and it can take months. We’ve got a cruise planned in January where we’re visiting six countries, so we can’t send our passports in yet,” Tiffany says. “Social media is easy, because you can just change your name. At work there was a whole process of requesting to change my name and verifying that Gabe was a real person.” (Tip: If you’re planning international travel immediately after your wedding, book the tickets with your maiden name and wait until after the trip to change your name.)
While the process can vary slightly from county to county, changing one’s name always starts with the Social Security Administration, which tries to make the process as seamless as possible.
“If individuals legally change their name because of marriage, divorce, court order, or any other reason, they must notify us right away to receive a corrected card—and for Social Security to accurately keep track of all earnings for retirement purposes,” says Eric Martinez, deputy regional communications director for the SSA. "
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