Newlywed Needs

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!

7 Debt-Free Newlywed Date Night Ideas

Looking for debt-free newlywed date ideas? The holidays take a lot out of us (physically and financially), but that doesn’t mean that we should forego Date Night all together, right? I say absolutely not! Try one or all seven of these budget friendly Date Night Ideas:

1. Go bowling: It’s fun (even if you need to use the bumpers) and it doesn’t cost nearly as much as going out for dinner and drinks. Heck, you could bowl 3 or more games for the price it costs you to eat out.

2. Prepare a romantic dinner (at home): Head to your local grocery store and pick up all the necessities for your home cooked meal. DivineDinnerParty.com has a collection of romantic dinner recipes that will surely sweep you both off your feet! You can light some candles, open a bottle of wine and listen to your favorite love songs while enjoying each other’s company.

3. Dance the night away: Set up your iPod to play your favorite guilty pleasure songs or dust off your CD’s and you could sing and dance in your family room. It sure beats paying a cover charge to enter the club and then for drinks too!

4. Rent a movie: They are so cheap ($1.00) to rent using RedBox (typically located at grocery stores and gas stations). You can choose your movie and snuggle up on the couch and enjoy it together.

5. Bath Time: Who needs a hot tub when you can fill the bath tub with hot water and bubbles?! Light some candles and you’ll have yourselves a relaxing, romantic evening for two!

6. Watch the sunrise or sunset: When was the last time you did something with your spouse without distractions? It’s so beautiful to watch the sun come up or go down. Just sit there (enjoy each others’ company) and stare as the beautiful colors appear in the sky (and it’s FREE)! Click here to find out what time the sun will rise/set in your area: calendar-updates.com.

7. Looking for some slight physical activity and entertainment: Head to your local driving range or try mini golf (it’s always a good time)!

Do you have anything to add to this list? What budget-friendly Date Nights have you and your spouse enjoyed?

Win Over $650 in Skin Care!

Has your budget recovered from Holiday Season? Hopefully so, but if you’re still sweating out the purchases made in the previous year, here’s some good news. You can enter to win over $650 in skin care from our newlywed blog! Imagine not having to pay for moisturizers and skin brighteners for the next 8 weeks. Envy Medical has teamed up with MissNowMrs.com to offer one of our lucky newlywed blog readers the chance to score a Lumixyl Topical Brightening system kit! Whether you’re trying to maintain your newlywed glow, or you’re planning to walk down the aisle, who wouldn’t want to win this great skin care kit?!

This skin care kit uses a revolutionary peptide technology developed by researchers at Stanford University to even your skin tone by eliminating age spots, sun spots and any photo damage that you may have. Lumixyl Brightening Crème also has the benefits of several moisturizing ingredients. In fact, study participants reported visible improvements in overall skin tone in addition to a 50% improvement in the appearance of their age and sun spots after 16 weeks!

Ready to get your glow on with our January giveaway? Leave a comment on this, or any of our Newlywed Bed Posts on Mondays this month and you’ll be automatically entered to win. Tell us all about why you should win this prize and what trouble spots it would help you eliminate. The randomly selected contest winner will be announced on Janaury 31st!! If we don’t hear back from the winner within 2 weeks, we will randomly select a new winner to make sure someone ends up with this great goodie!

Looking for more newlywed advice? Our experts are her to help

In-laws And Boundaries

Some husband and wives adore their in-laws. Others, well, not so much. You don’t have to adore your in-laws, but if you want your marriage to be happy, it’s important that you learn how to tolerate them, and that you set up some boundaries. Setting boundaries about your in-laws can help to make a marriage run much more smoothly and can stop fights before they even occur. And the best time to set those boundaries is right after the honeymoon is over, so that there is no confusion about what’s going to happen.

Discussion Time:
You can’t set boundaries about your in-laws without having a discussion, so set a date for the two of you to get together, with no interruptions, to discuss your issues. Before you have the discussion make sure that your partner is aware of what the discussion will entail so that they can come to the table ready, and so that they won’t feel ambushed, and you, yourself, should get a list ready of things that you want to discuss.

Remember, during the conversation, that you’re talking about someone else’s family. Even if they have a hard time dealing with their own family, and often say things that aren’t very nice about them, you have to be respectful. You wouldn’t want them disrespecting your family members, even if you have problems with them. They’re family and as such deserve to be spoken about in a respectful tone.

Setting Boundaries:
Once you’re ready to talk it’s time to get down to business. Setting boundaries for in-laws may be a simple process or it may be one that takes some time, and to many couples it may originally feel like making some sort of a contract. These boundaries can be anything, from specific ones to more relaxed ones. Some couples, for instance, enjoy their privacy and so they agree to only visit their in-laws once every few months or so. Others want more contact and agree to go to dinner with their in-laws every few weeks or even more. The type of boundaries that you set are completely up to you. It’s most important to remember that your in-law is your spouse’s loved one, and that you need to take their needs into consideration, which may mean dealing with someone that you don’t care for very much.

What boundaries have you set for your in-laws? Are there any you wish you would have set earlier in your marriage?

Post-Holiday Pep Talk!

Get ready for a post-holiday pep talk! Are you sitting around in a post-holiday daze? Well, snap out of it! Now is the perfect time to bang out all of those projects you meant to do last year. l If you follow our suggestions, you’ll be busy all Winter and totally care free when the warm weather arrives in the Spring.

Organize – Are your closets and cabinets completely out of control? Use the dark early evenings to get things organized. Not only will you feel better, but you’ll know exactly where everything is in your home, which will make doing other projects much easier.

Donate – Do you have a pile of unused gifts from this holiday season (and others)? Donate them and any of the items you discarded from your closets to a good cause.

Sew/Tailor –Looking at the pants you bought on sale last year and still haven’t had tailored? Now’s the time to collect all articles of clothing that need some mending or hemming and take them to a tailor or sew them yourself. The result of your efforts: “new” clothes in your closet that you didn’t have to buy!

Deep clean – Why save cleaning for Spring when you want to be outside enjoying the weather? Make a checklist of what needs to be done in your home and split it with your spouse. I find that having a reward for the completion of the list makes things much more fun. Decide to go out to the new restaurant you’ve been dying to try or to the movies as a reward for finishing your cleaning.

Doctors Appointments – What’s worse than going to the dentist or OB? Going to sit in their offices for hours when you could be playing tennis or soaking up the sunshine. Schedule your (and your hubby’s) year’s worth of doctors appointments for January-March and then you’ll not only be healthy, you’ll be free to enjoy the weather.

We hope post-holiday pep talk gets you motivated and through the Winter slump! If name change was on your to-do list last year, we can help with that. Check out the MissNowMrs name change app or online service to save 13 hours of hassle!

Help Me Change My Name

Investing Wisely – A Few Tips for Newlyweds

Investing wisely – a few tips for newlyweds are necessary. So we did the research for you! Most newlyweds know that investing can be riskier than just stowing money away into a money market account or CD. As a couple, you may have very different ideas on how to invest your earnings. Instead of every man and woman for him or herself, you should talk to your partner and find out what he/she would like to do as well as inform them of your own ideas. Together, you will be able to find a comfortable investing balance.

Studies show that men are bigger risk takers than women (no surprise there, right ladies?). Some husbands may want to go all in like a poker game – “I have a good feeling about this!” Most wives, on the other hand, would rather their retirement savings stay where they are, safe and sound earning a small but steady percentage in the bank. So how do you find a balance?

By talking to one another (it’s always about clear communication!), you can figure out what your long term and short term goals are. Examine your budget and decide what sort of investment risks you are actually able to take. If money is tight, it’s best to avoid any sort of risk until things are more stable. If you have plenty to play with, you can try jumping into the pool and seeing what happens.

Overall, both of you need to agree on where you stand and how to handle your funds. Don’t just talk about what you want either – if he wants to invest a lot of money now and you keep saying, “But we don’t have the money!” it may not sink in. You should actually have the numbers in front of both of you so you can see where your money is being spent, how much is coming in, what is spent on bills, and so forth. When money is mapped out, it’s much easier to organize it and control it, rather than just talking about it arbitrarily.

You do both have the option of investing separately; he with his money and she with hers. If you decide to go this route, agree upon which funds should not be toyed with; these can include emergency funds, retirement funds, and the amount needed for basic living expenses.

Whether you invest together, separately, or not at all, you should consider coming together once a year and reevaluating your portfolios and budget. Make sure it all balances out and that the risks are worth taking.

Are you investing wisely – a few tips for newlyweds… did ours pay off? What investments (risky or not) have you and your spouse taken? Did they pay off or cause too much tension in your relationship? We’d love for you to leave us a comment!