Congratulations. I have to say that I like the 2nd bouquet the best, it has the perfect fall colors. Don't stress to much over the planning, all it will be very stressfull at times. Good luck with the surname issues, you are right, for some reason guys are attached to their surname. Actually , I think that the attachment comes from the expected norm of the bride taking the grooms name, so they don't want take the brides just because it isn't the expected.

First of all, best of wishes on your engagement! Both the rings and the bouquets are lovely and unique.

Secondly, even after being married for close to thirteen years, I so feel your pain with the his/her surname debate!

My DH has one of the top 3 surnames in the United States. I have a relatively uncommon, evidently unpronouncible, Cajun French surname. I made the decision to hypenate my last name......a decision DH mightly endorsed. The names sounded really great together, and I was happy; until it came to paperwork, and filing systems, and customer service reps trying to find me in their computors. Sometimes, not so fun.
I had a daughter, and then a son. Each time, DH insisted that each of them took the hypenated surname. It's tough for little kids learning to write when their names are 25 letters long!!!!
Even though I love my hypenated last name, sometimes I wish I had just become a Jones.

Laurie

Hehe..my Mother called me about this thread. My father was a wedding photographer, and she just looooves a wedding! We both love the flowers, and the ring! One thing I remember from when I got married was that my bouquet was HEAVY, and I couldn't wait to hand it off to my sister. The rest of the flowers decorating the reception hall were all wild-flowers we picked the night before.

I worked at a photo lab, and one guy's last name was Paisley- and I said "that's interesting" and he said when he got married they couldn't decide on what name to use, so they just picked a name they liked! Ithaca is a pretty hippy town- so local custom is no custom at all. Technically I'm a hyphenate, but yes, it's easier just to pick a name and go with it.

More input on the names.....
Since I have a fairly common maiden name and the most common girls first name of my birth year (Jennifer), I was wanting a less common last name. It never occurred to me not to take my DH's last name. I did legally change my middle name to my maiden name, though. I think my sister did the same thing. The sad part is that there is no one else to carry on the name in our family even though it is a semi common one.

Thank you so much, all your kind words really warms my heart. I got caught up in wedding planing and forgot about this thread for a while

Karen it is so funny that your mum called you about my wedding, cute. I've studied photography and finding that right person to shoot our wedding is one of the most important things for me. I love Jonas Peterson's work but since he is in Australia it's just to expensive to fly him to Sweden. We want the photographer to capture us from start to finish line and I think we've found the right photog for us. He's name is Carl Bengtsson and we are gonna meet him soon to discus the details.

And I'm really happy to announce that my future hubby almost have changed his mind about the surname. He does not seem to mind any more and I think he's just saying he is keeping his name to tease me

Here is another picture of the ring style we're thinking about. I think the chunky one with one yellow diamond will be the one for my bee loving hubby.

I took dh's name, mostly because I wanted the whole family to have the same name, his is shorter and I like it better, and his scientific career is twelve years more established than mine, and all his publications are under his current surname. It was also really nice because we changed my first dd's surname to dh's surname, so it gave them a really nice connection. (He would love to legally adopt her, but her stupid useless biological dad wouldn't agree )

Before we got married, I had always thought I would take DH's last name too, but afterwards, it just felt a little weird, kwim? I am Chinese, he is Hispanic, and somehow the name just didn't fit right. I mean I'm pretty Asian. So it's been over 6 months, and I haven't even begun. At first he kinda grumbled, but then hasn't said anything since, so I'm just gonna see how long it lasts. LOL. It'll probably come up when we have kids ( like in 5 years or something ) so it'll be interesting when that happens, but the kids will definitely have his last name. And traditionally, Chinese women kept their own last name too, so it's not unusual in my culture for the parents to have different names. Oh well, we'll see how it goes. Besides, do you know how MANY credit cards I would have to change? LOL

Congratulations! Love the rings & those shoes.....but the real stunners are the boquet pics you posted so far!