The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran an article earlier this week about brides taking their groom's name after they married (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05311/601902.stm).  For a number of years, the percentage of brides changing their name declined, but recently, the trend has reversed.

According to the study conducted in 2004 by Harvard University researchers, the fraction of white, college graduates in Massachusetts who kept their maiden names decreased from 21 percent to 13 percent from 1990 to 2000.

And in a poll last spring from the wedding planning Web site TheKnot.com, 81 percent of those surveyed said they would take their husband's name -- up from 71 percent in 2000.

Granted, The Knot's study is not very scientific, and Harvard's seems pretty limited in scope, but the numbers are probably within acceptable error of one another.  In our case, The Bloomery's owner changed her name after several years of marriage, and only so the last names on their passports matched when travelling internationally.  We're located in her hometown, and many people in the area know her or her family (so many people that her groom, who moved here from another state, used to joke about changing his name instead).

We don't have any advice--it's a personal decision in every case, and each bride has different considerations.  The modern groom should be understanding of his bride's choice, whichever way she chooses, and respect her reasons for doing so.  Which is a great segue into another topic.

Clergy have long felt that it's not the wedding per se that matters, but the marriage.  However, marriage educators have recently begun to feel that the process of planning a wedding is not only good practice for a marriage, but can actually predict the success of the marriage.  Planning a wedding, as you no doubt know, is an invitation to conflict.  The basic indicator for a successful marriage is how the couple interacts with each other, and with each other's family; in short, how those inevitable conflicts are resolved:

Successful couples are those who know how to discuss their differences in ways that actually strengthen their relationship and improve intimacy.  Successful couples don't let their disagreements contaminate the rest of the relationship. (http://www.smartmarriages.com/divorcepredictor.html)

To quote Bill and Ted, "Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes!"  For more information along these lines, you can visit Smart Marriages at http://www.smartmarriages.com/.