Relationship

Looking for name change advice or some tips for newlywed life? The MissNowMrs experts have created state-specific name change articles and checklists for you. We’ve chronicled our recommendations for how to travel while changing your name AND how to handle voting during the transition.

We’ve also compiled our best guidance for how to handle difficult sister in laws, holidays as newlyweds, the ever-annoying baby questions, and much more. Why? Because, while we are name change experts, we’re also newlywed wives, moms, and sisters.

We hope our name change advice articles help smooth your transition to your new name, and a whole new phase of life. Congratulations and best wishes from the entire MissNowMrs team!

3 Secrets Every Newlywed Couple Needs to Maintain Happiness for a Lifetime

What’s the secret to maintain happiness in your marriage? As you return from your honeymoon, unpack your wedding gifts and begin settling into married life, you most likely start asking yourself if you and your partner will be as happy now as you were when you first met, fell in love and spent every single minute together as a pair.

Suddenly, you start imagining the worst – you and your spouse, bored with married life, unhappy and grumpy. The key to a happy marriage? Stop the negative thinking! Many couples stay happy together through the years, in spite of occasional arguments, financial difficulties or other hardships, because they work on keeping their marriage happy. “Happiness maintenance” should be a couple’s joint chore and you can achieve great success in performing it if you know these three simple secrets.

1. Understand what makes both you and your hubby happy. If you are an avid shopper and a shoe sale at Saks makes your heart beat faster and instantly fills you with glee, your new partner may not share your sentiments. Don’t be completely selfish. Instead, focus on mutual interests and activities that can fulfill both of you. Whether it is traveling, watching sports or decorating your house – try to do more of what makes the two of you happy! Once you do, you will realize that your marriage is becoming a more rewarding and peaceful journey every day.

2. Know that everyone argues, so when you have your first argument as a married couple, don’t automatically assume something horrible is happening. Communication is key and sometimes it can come in the form of an argument, but remember – never go to bed angry! “Finish” your argument by sincerely apologizing and assuring that both of you understand where the other person was coming from. You can agree to disagree on occasion, but carrying anger over to the bedroom is the worst thing a newlywed couple can do.

3. Remember how you felt that first time you heard “I love you” from your now partner-for-life? The bliss of that moment may have worn off, but the meaning and significance of these three little words never did, and you surely appreciate every opportunity to hear them. So does your spouse! Never pass a chance of saying “I love you” not just to remind him of how you feel but to give your husband a feeling of happiness! While the words are great, little “I love you” surprises are even better. Send your man a romantic text, make him heart shaped cookies or hide a love note somewhere you know he’ll find it and smile. Remember, love is all you need!

What small things have you done to maintain happiness in your marriage lately? Were any a huge hit or a total miss? We’d love to know!

Honeymoon Stage: Is This For Real?

Are you in the honeymoon stage? One of the most exciting new statements in your vocabulary once you are married is, “This is my husband!” After being married, you’ll hang out with couples (both dating and married) and will most-likely hear a lot of, “Oh, you’re still in the honeymoon stage.” This is one of those statements that you don’t necessarily want to hear because you’re not sure how to take it–and what does that mean anyway?

My husband and I have decided after two years of marriage that there is no such thing, and in fact we have grown closer and are even more in love today, than the day we got married! I continue to ponder the concept and meaning of ‘the honeymoon stage’ and guess people may associate it with characteristics such as: a consistent glow or aura of happiness, PDA’s, or classic gentleman moves like opening doors and pulling out your chair. These characteristics are considered to be quite romantic to most women and we ALL want to feel the utmost love and appreciation in our relationship. It is so exciting to see young, married couples that are truly the best of friends and madly in love. It’s even more endearing when you can find this in a couple that have been married for 15, 25, 35+ years, where this love and friendship has continued to grow stronger with time.

So now when people say to my husband and I “You must still be in the honeymoon stage,” I take this as a compliment, as I am happy to hear that others can visibly see the kind of relationship that my husband and I share– and that is something to truly be proud of and smile about no matter what ‘stage’ we may or may not be in!

No matter what stage you’re in, if you need to change your name MissNowMrs can help. Use our easy name change app or online service to save 13 hours of hassle!

Help Me Change My Name

Divvying Up The Newlywed Dirty Work

Newlywed dirty work. What’s that?! Newlywed couples often find themselves arguing over who’s going to take care of the chores in their daily lives. It’s tough when you both work full-time jobs or have opposite schedules to figure out what works best for you as a couple. It’s normal to feel overwhelmed by responsibilities and feel like YOU do it all, but before you rip into your spouse for not pulling his weight around the house think about everything he DOES take care of by making a list.

If your list is completely one sided, it may be time to discuss splitting the household chores ASAP for your own sanity! Some couples are lucky enough to work the same schedule allowing them to partake in chore duty together, even making them fun. If you and your spouse aren’t one of these couples, you can still allocate the chores and get them done on your own time.

Here are some of the most common, laborious chores that couples despise along with a few helpful tips on how to share the burden!

Cooking: One of you could prepare dinner and the other could be in charge of washing the dishes. You could even alternate nights and take turns trying new recipes with each other. One way to keep it interesting is to recipe swap with family members or friends. You may find that you and/or your spouse aren’t cut out to be the next Iron Chef, but that you enjoy cooking and most of all, the time spent learning how to cook together!

Cleaning: It’s best not to leave all the cleaning to one person (lets face it, it’s boring and it’s not fair!) A family member once told me that she kept her house ‘clean enough’ at all times just in case someone stopped by unexpectedly. I remember thinking at the time what wonderful advice that was from a full-time working Mother and it has stuck with me over the years. You don’t want to be embarrassed because you haven’t dusted in weeks or there are dirty dishes piled up in your sink.

So, you should designate a couple of hours one day per week to dusting, vacuuming and cleaning the rooms. It works out best if you divvy up the tasks (and switch from week to week to break up the monotony of your routine). If one day per week seems like too much work for your busy schedule, at least try to keep the rooms that your guests would see spotless and then clean the rest of your house as time permits!

Money: Ugh, bills! Lucky for newlyweds today, we have the option to pay our bills online alleviating us from having to sit down at the kitchen table and manually write out checks to every company–like our parents and grandparents did. However, it’s very common to allow one person to handle the finances leaving the other in the dark as far as where the money goes each month. Be sure that you both know what’s going on when it comes to your finances so that if one of you is out-of-town or unable to take care of the bills, the other one can simply fill-in. It’s easy to miss a payment if you don’t know when it’s due or worse, you don’t know how to access your online banking account to press the payment button!

Laundry: Hand-wash, hot, cold, colors, whites only, wash but don’t dry—with all these instructions who could blame a man for not wanting to voluntarily take on doing the laundry?! Some couples prefer to stick to the “I’ll do mine and you do yours” method, but if you wish to help each other out it is probably best to do it together the first few times. This way you could show your spouse how to separate the colors from the whites and explain what gets washed using what cycle, detergent, etc. This will ultimately (hopefully) keep him from shrinking your favorite shirt into something even Barbie wouldn’t fit into. Not to mention, you could have a make-out session during the spin cycle turning the laundry into something he will surely want to do again!

We’d love to hear your solutions for divvying up newlywed dirty work. Please share in a comment below!