I find this whole issue intensely frustrating. And most of the people in my family change their names. But I don't like either the solution that my identity changes and his goes on unchanged or that I keep my identity and form a family unit in which there is one name for everyone except me. And I don't like the implication that keeping or changing one's name says something about how committed one is to the marriage. (do people who say that mean that my dad isn't committed to his marriage? My brother?) It's silly, but it gets to me.

And I have the funny situation that there aren't any other people with my name, so changing to a name that is *very* shared feels even more like subsuming an identity than it might otherwise.

I have a friend who changed her name nine months before the wedding, because she knew she wanted to, and that way her diplomas and publications would all be under the same name. (not undergrad, but all the doctory stuff)