For all you newly engaged brides out there, my Dec 26 post on Brides.com:

Mothers of the bride.

Friends of the bride.

Sisters of the bride.

Many people find my website because they want to help the brides-to-be in their lives who seem to be struggling with some unruly, unexpected, and difficult emotions.

Friends, sisters, mothers -- I often get emails asking, "How can I best help this emotional bride that I love so much?"

I'm excited to share a guest blog post I wrote this week on Creative Money blog with Mindy Crary:  
5 Tips for Getting Financially Naked. 

Here's an excerpt:

One of the tasks of being engaged is what I call “getting financially naked.”  Laying yourself bare and:

• Sharing your assets: salary, income, investments, portfolio 
• Laying out your liabilities: mortgage, student loan, credit card debt, car loan 
• Explaining the history behind your financial situation — Owning the good, the bad, and the ugly of your individual financial picture

This isn’t easy. 

It doesn’t happen quickly or without bumps in the road. 

A new study from University of California at Santa Cruz published Jan 16, "Girls Don't Propose, Ew!", shows that, when it comes to marriage proposals, we are still very traditional, with 68% of men and 66% of women "definitely" wanting the man the propose.

I'm not surprised by this figure, what with the mythology we as women grow up with, starting with Cinderella when we are 3 or 4 years old all the way up to "The Bachelor."

What did make me scratch my head were the statistics about taking his last name:

• 60% of women were very or somewhat willing to take his name
  
• 22% of women reported being "neither willing nor unwilling"
  
• 11% were "somewhat unwilling" to take his name
  
• 6.4% call themselves "very unwilling"

Hmmmm. These percentages don't jive with what I see in my practice with brides; I sometimes spend a lot of time helping brides decide what they want or how to talk with their fiances about the fact that they do not want to change their last names.

But then I read that the UCSC study was of 277 undergraduates, ages 17 to 26. That explains it. To me, at least.

Most of the women I work with are 28+ years old, with established careers and identities as single women.  They've worked for many years building up their professional names and their individual identities.  Unless you've always been that woman who knew without question that she'd take her husband's last name, then what to do about your last name is a challenge, whichever way you slice it.

I threaded the name-change needle by hyphenating my 2 little last names. It works for me, and except at my children's elementary school, where there's always a kerfuffle about whether I should be called "Mrs. Moir-Smith" or "Mrs. Smith".  For ease, I'm becoming "Mrs. Smith," because we are known as the Smith family.  And I'm getting used to being Mrs. Smith (OK, sort of :) ), the same way I got used to being Allison Moir-Smith.

Where are you in the name-change game?  Taking his? Keeping yours? Hyphenating? Creating a new one?  So many good options out there! Share with us what you're thinking below.