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Hello everyone,
I will be booking flights for my honeymoon shortly and want to book them using my maiden name (booking them with my future married name when that isn’t my name yet seems like bad luck!!!)
Once I’m married and get a new passport, can I update the name on the flight ticket with BA to match my new married name? The booking will be using avios, in case that makes a difference. Happy to pay a fee to do this, just wanted to check if it is possible.
Thanks!
How soon after your marriage is your honeymoon? Not sure about your specific query, but most would likely just travel on the old passport and do the name change on the passport after the event.
Firstly, congratulations on the upcoming nuptials. It is an amazing experience, and flies by so quickly.
I got married at the weekend in Portugal, and did the registry bit on Monday, here in London, and we are going on honeymoon to Kenya and Tanzania at the end of October. If you are getting married in a registry office, unless you chose the expedited service, you won’t receive the certificate for at least 3 weeks.
Personally, I am not bothered about it for honeymoon, and can’t be, as we need visas for Kenya, but I will change the name on my passports as soon as I can thereafter. We have quite a few holidays booked, including honeymoon 2 in the French Polynesia, and 3 other trips (outside of honeymoon 1, booked with BA). Some are avios, some are codeshare (e.g. booked with Virgin, but on Air France). I have done a bit of research and they all say that they’re happy to change the name on the account and booking if shown (at a minimum) a scanned copy of the marriage certificate or counterpart (it will of course have to be in English for UK based airlines).
What I have also read is it is important that the name on your executive account (or similar) is under your new married name when you ask to make the changes.
Hope you have a wonderful wedding and honeymoon! @redlilly I also went to Kenya on my honeymoon in 1996, still recall watching the sunrise over Kilimanjaro across the border in Tanzania from our safari lodge on stilts.
There’s no actual need to change your name for travel purposes, I never did and it’s never caused any issues. If you really want to do it, you may as well wait until your passport needs renewing anyway rather than forking out for a new one. The UK one is total rip-off anyway – a Spanish passport costs 30 euros by comparison!
Leave all travel as your maiden name for your honeymoon, it will cause you a ridiculous amount of grief. I know of two passport applications come back wrong recently and the saga to undo the mistake was ridiculous.
Like Steve says. You have to be crazy to add an extra unnecessary layer of risk into the trip.
+1
Whilst if it’s a BA issued BA flight it isn’t usually a big deal to change it, it’s still added complexity for no gain. Change your passport when it expires or at least during a no travel period.
Just make sure anyone booking travel for you (work etc) knows what name is in your passport. I booked a flight for my sister recently and then had a panic the day before that she hadn’t updated her passport name. (She had as she was worried about her vaccine certificate not matching her passport back in “those” days!)
Hope you have a wonderful wedding and honeymoon! @redlilly I also went to Kenya on my honeymoon in 1996, still recall watching the sunrise over Kilimanjaro across the border in Tanzania from our safari lodge on stilts.
Thank you! We are very excited for our very first safari and trip to “Real Africa”!
Glad to hear the patriarchy is alive and kicking.
Glad to hear the patriarchy is alive and kicking.
Which bit? The desire to change name on marriage (which my wife admittedly didn’t, she hasn’t even changed her bank account after all these years*) or our advice on not risking having the Passport Office wreck your holiday?!
*I accept that she does not necesssarily want to spend every City meeting she attends answering the question ‘are you married to that Head for Points guy?’
Not that it matters or anyone needs to justify themselves, but lots of people might not want to be associated with their original surname. Perhaps they like their new partners surname. Perhaps they think it is important to them and their connection with their partner.
For what it’s worth, my husband tried to discourage me from adopting his surname, as he said it will cause me no end of problems (he is Portuguese) and he doesn’t want me to feel “obliged” to do it…
There is a lot more too it than history, tradition, and “the woman’s role”…
Did he consider adopting your name? Do you know any man marrying a woman that changed his name after marriage? Says it all, doesn’t it?
99% of (unmarried) women already have the surname of a man – their father.
We considered making a new surname when we got married, but we decided there were better things to spend time and effort on
@Rui N yes I have a very close family member who, on marrying his wife, changed his surname by deed poll to a new name they had chosen together so that both they and any children they had would all have the same name, without choosing one family name over the other. I also know a lot of couples who have married in the last couple of years who have chosen to double-barrel their surnames. However, I don’t think it is at all helpful to cast judgement on anyone’s choice when it comes to changing or not changing their surname on marriage. It is a very blinkered view to assume that if, e.g., a woman takes her husband’s surname, that it is purely down to “the patriarchy” and this decision automatically decrees upon her the label of being a subservient woman bound to oppressive tradition. As @redlilly says, there are a myriad of reasons why people choose to use the surname they do post-marriage and in my view it’s no one’s business other than that of the couple in question.
Remember, you can change your name to anything, e.g. Princess Consuela Bananahammock!
@Michael C – not in the UK you can’t.
Hello everyone,
Once I’m married and get a new passport
Congratulations. You can obtain a passport in your married name three months prior to your ceremony.
The passport will be dated for the date of your wedding so you can jet off on honeymoon without a care! For those interested in what happens if you don’t get married, the ceremony team will notify HMPO if you don’t get married who will invalidate your passport immediately.
And @michael you are correct, you can change your name to almost anything – there is a list of names that are barred on grounds of being offensive, but you can change your name to almost anything from as little as £30.
Remember, you can change your name to anything, e.g. Princess Consuela Bananahammock!
Indeed, I am very excited to be going to see ABBA Voyage tomorrow in my best 70s disco garb and will be answering to Princess Anni-Frid Lyngstad von Plauen (as she actually is!)
I got scolded when I asked if my Spanish passport could have my maiden and married names on, instead of my mum’s maiden name, as of course Spanish women traditionally don’t change their names on marriage. My mum’s name is awful though, and totally ruins the effect 😂
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