Getting married takes a lot of preparation, but what about after marriage? One of the most important steps is often forgotten about until after the wedding bells have been packed away. How do you change your last name after getting married?

It may seem easy at first, but there’s a lot of paperwork to fill out. You must fill out forms for the Social Security office, for bank accounts, credit cards, insurance policies, magazine subscriptions, your work place and more. There’s a lot of forms and a lot of paperwork for a new bride to go through to legally change your name after marriage.

One company is making it easier for new brides to fulfill the paperwork after marriage. Danielle Tate shares her tips from her experience as president of MissNowMrs, the premier online name-change service for brides.

Here are a few tips on name change in 2010:

1. Hyphenation is a thing of the past. Most brides are taking their maiden names as new middle names or adding their spouse’s last name to theirs without a hyphen.

2. Did you know that you can start the name-change process prior to your wedding? Using MissNowMrs.com will allow you to complete all of your name-change forms before your wedding so all you have to do after your honeymoon is click Print and mail out or file your forms.

3. We recommend requesting 2-3 copies of your marriage certificate. This will allow you to file multiple forms at the same time and streamline the name-change process.

4. If you are changing your name, let your families and bridesmaids know to avoid mis-monogrammed items as gifts.

5. Be sure to book you honeymoon reservations in your maiden name (since most brides don’t have time to file for a new driver’s license or Passport before the honeymoon). This will help you avoid travel disaster and not being able to board your flight.

MissNowMrs now offers to sponsor a giveaway right here at GGB. (It’s a Geek. It’s a Girl. It’s a Blog.) Know someone getting married soon or getting married soon yourself? Here’s a chance to win one of five gift cards.

You Could Win A Gift Card From MissNowMrs
(A $30 Value)

We have five gift cards to give away, thanks to MissNowMrs. The gift cards are great for yourself if you have or will be getting married, or as a gift to someone else you know.

To win, post a comment to this blog post.

Tell us about the best or worst last name or first and last name combination that you’ve heard about. Helen Church? Funny, sad or just plain crazy, I want to hear about it.

Make sure to register with this site, or post a method of contact for me to be able to reach you. I will contact you by your provided email address if you’ve been selected as a winner, and there will be an additional blog post announcing the winner here. (I don’t keep emails or collect them for any other purpose other than giveaways.)

Want an additional entry? Subscribe to our RSS Feed!

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Want another entry? Help us build our Brand Spankin’ New Facebook Fan Page!

It's a Geek. It's a Girl. It's a Blog. on Facebook

Want yet another entry? Follow me on Twitter!

Rules and the legal bits: You must be 18 or older to participate and live inside the United States. Five gift cards will be given away in a random drawing from those who have posted in the comments here.

The contest ends April 9th, 2010. Tell your friends, tell your family. Remember to check back to see who wins.

Thank you, MissNowMrs, for being a great service to new brides and for sharing the chance to win a gift card to readers! Be sure to visit the website, the Twitter page or become a fan on Facebook!

Photo from Stock Exchange. Gift card images from MissNowMrs. Used with permission.

It’s that time of year again. Spring and summer weddings are coming up soon. According to statistics, 35% of weddings occur in the summer; 29% in the spring; 23% in the fall; 13% in the winter. What’s a chic-geek going to do with a spring or summer wedding? Need ideas on how to handle themes or want glimpses into weddings past? Here’s a few snapshots I’ve admired from across the web.

Most people like to get married close to home, but top destinations for weddings are Las Vegas, Hawaii, Bahamas, Jamaica and the Virgin Islands. Looking for something different? How about Hobbiton? Of course, most people think of the Star Trek weddings in Las Vegas when it comes to geeks, but not all of us are Star Trek fans. (I am, but you might not be!)

Even if you can’t go to a far away location, your own location can be decorated to your own themed wedding. Ren faires, beaches, and chapels can all be beautiful in their own way, and just as chic-geek as a Star Trek vessel.

Photo by mckenna71

Outside of location, what about the wedding dress? Pick a hot wedding dress that fits your style, and embellish it a little. Even some slightly-off-white binary code with “love” or the groom’s name can be a little geek that can be a great touch.

Gwen Stefani’s pink wedding gown is totally chic. There’s tons of possibilities so don’t be limited by what you see on the racks. You may find a seamstress that can turn a plain gown into something you’ll absolutely love.

Mixing and matching chic elements with a few geek highlights is hot. If you’re going for chic-geek throughout your wedding and the after party, try hidden elements. A sword knife and shield spoon as wedding favors and as utensils for the wedding party?

Later this week, I’ll share gift ideas for friends who are getting married, for both bride and groom. It’s not just the bride and her friends that have work to do when a wedding is coming up. What do you get for the couple who has everything? How do you avoid getting them yet-another toaster? Keep reading!

PS: Check out this cake. Looks like an average wedding cake? Check the ribbon. Is that binary? That’s so cool!

Had enough food blogs from me?

Rumor has it that Felicia Day is going to be staring in a new SyFy movie, Red. (source) It’ll be based off of the Red Riding Hood story… except all grown up and with werewolves and creepiness. Don’t we just love that?

Best of all, for a werewolf hunter, her new beau starts out by being changed into a werewolf! Guess she’ll have to kill him? Or not? Who knows! Kind of reminds you of that Underworld movie, right? Well, who cares. Felicia Day rocks.

Just one of these days, I hope someone does a movie about Bitten, or any of the books from the Otherworld series by Kelley Armstrong. How many male werewolves do we have to see before we see female ones? Hollywood needs to get their fantasy boots on.

Back to Felicia, I certainly hope to see more of The Guild and other shows and movies with her. Such a cutie and a whole lot of fun. About time geek girls got some recognition.

I can’t believe I haven’t been following this girl’s on Twitter before now. Why didn’t she email me personally and say she had a Twitter feed? Darn it.

By the way, did you all read the news about the article on Felicia Day and the other great Twitter girls? Who hires a writer who doesn’t know about Twitter and isn’t a fan of at least one of these girls to write an article? Sheesh.

I had one of those embarrasing movie moments yesterday.

I saw this guy walking his dog yesterday. My string of thoughts were the following.

So at that point I’m just staring. Probably really creepily too as my mouth was part open and like I was totally just bug eyeing him.

So he says hello.

And I croak, “Hi–”… Yes, I never get to the “I” because I’ve already choked on it.

Total movie moment. Yeah. I’m so embarrased. I walked on and then went through all the flutterings of embarrasment. I’m sort of shy about walking that way again. That was so funny though.

Honestly, why would you even want to pay an extra $50 or more a month just for television? If you have high speed Internet access, everything you need is online. Plus more! And I can pause and fastforward and rewind and all that fancy stuff that TiVo owners can do, too.

1. YouTube – Many of the video makers at YouTube are very talented and are just as entertaining as a lot of shows online.
2. The Guild/Dr. Horrible – You can get online for free. Nuff said.
3. Hulu – Free TV shows, nice quality, watch at any time, and limited commercials.
4. Netflix – They are now getting many TV shows and movies hosted on their service online, so you can watch instantly. No commercials, and anything they don’t happen to have online right now they will send you the DVD for.
5 – 10. Every other video website on the Internet. Srsly. There’s a ton. And you couldn’t go through all of them in a life time I bet. More are added every day.

The Guild

If you get through all of those, and you still have free time… get out of the house, dude/babe.

+5 to Sexterity!