Okay, so I am going to do it. But out of curiosity, I started looking into what I will have to do officially change my name..... and I knew there was a lot of paperwork... but
there's a LOT of crap that needs to be done!!!
To make things even more exciting, I will be moving to a new state prior to the wedding - which isn't the state we are getting married in. Sigh.
Looks like the very first place to go if you're going to change your name is your local SSA building to get a new SS card. Without that, you basically can't get anything else changed. But the new card takes like, 10 days to get mailed to you. So to prove your identity, US citizenship, etc, you can use a passport or birth cert when you're changing your name on your DL. (Though apparently in MD you have to wait at least 48 hours because if your name hasn't gone through in the SS database you can't get a new DL....)