WAIT.
Why the heck are we changing out last name? What is wrong with "Andrews"?
Well, first of all - nothing is wrong with Andrews. I would happily take it! BUT if I did, I wouldn't feel connected to it or identify with it my WHOLE LIFE. When I see "Kat Andrews" or when someone says "Kat Andrews", I don't feel like it's ME. Don't get me wrong, I have been waiting to steal Daniel's last name since I met him. I used to doodle my name with his last name when we were dating. But now that I have it, I just can't connect with it. If you all know me, I am all about personalizing things to make it ME. When I get a new phone, the first thing I do is immediately change the case, rename the phone on iTunes, change the wallpaper, etc. That's literally the first thing I do. I have to make it feel like it's MY phone.
So when I couldn't connect to Andrews, I talked to Daniel about it. We figured out that it's because I've known his family as "the Andrews" my whole life. I can't be called "Mrs. Andrews" because that is his mom. I can't have a sign in our room that says "the Andrews Family" without thinking it's his family's sign. It was so hard for me and I promise you, I TRIED. I wanted Andrews to identify with ME so bad! But it just felt like we weren't our own family when we're the Andrews.
I told him that if he was upset or wanted to keep Andrews, I would happily do it for him. I also suggested to hyphenate our last names (Ly-Andrews) or combine it (Lyandrews - pronouced Leh-Andrews) but he didn't want my last name either.
After a lot of discussions and thoughts, we came to the conclusion to change our last name completely. It took a while for us to think of a last name that we were both happy with. After over a year of thinking, we came up with Darling and we connected with it immediately. It doesn't have a REALLY deep meaning to it like it should but we just connect to it.
We chose Darling because:
1) It's connected to Disney. The Darling family from Peter Pan. We're a huge Disney family. Daniel wanted the last name "Disney" for goodness sakes but I vetoed that idea - hah!
and most importantly 2) We never want to grow up. It's something we are always talking about. We don't want to grow up to be an adult robot. We want to live life. We want to have the mind of a kid who is always curious, adventurous, and imaginative. And the whole "never want to grow up" reminds us of Peter Pan (one of our top favorite movies/character). If you remember, the Darling family is in this movie. It just all connects.
You may get mad at us for breaking tradition. You may call us weird. You may call ME selfish. You may not understand but that's okay. We felt like this is right for our family. It has been over 6 months now since we've thought of Darling and we still feel like it is right. Daniel came up with an idea to use Darling on all our non-legal stuff for now. We've changed it on little things like Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, etc but today, Daniel took a big leap and changed it on Facebook. My heart is beating a million miles per hour but it feel good at the same time.
We know it's not how society works but we hope you all will support our decision.
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| Look! It says "Married to Daniel Andrews Darling"! |