When I got married in 2017, I didn’t expect that I’d get my updated passport in time to go on our Mediterranean honeymoon. Based on my research, this was no big deal – if you wouldn’t have a passport in your married name, you could just book your tickets in your maiden name. There would be no issue as long as your passport matched your ticket.
I brought my marriage license just in case, but it wasn’t needed. My passport matched my ticket, and no one was concerned. So I figured, since my passport didn’t expire until 2024, I’d just keep this going. It required a little extra thinking, but it wasn’t a bother to book my flights or hotel information under my maiden name. Why spend an additional $110 to renew my passport if I didn’t need to yet? (Check on the US Department of State website to confirm the price for you.)
So that’s what I did. All of my reservations for our road trip around Iceland were under my maiden name. No issue. I went on my three-country European girls’ trip and a cruise to Havana, Cuba with this incorrect passport without a problem. I even had tickets booked in my maiden name for our upcoming trips, like our tour around Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin for the holidays in 2018.
I figured I’d just replace my passport when it expired in six years, and I could change my name then. After all, it was so easy to book tickets under my maiden name!
… Until I had to go on a work trip to Toronto. While I hadn’t updated my name on my passport, I’d updated my name everywhere else, including at work. So when they booked my tickets to Toronto, they used my current name. Fortunately, I caught this beforehand, so I came to the airport very early, armed with documentation to prove it was really me.
The airport staff was less than thrilled to say the least. What they had to do involved removing me as a passenger with my current name and adding me in as a new passenger with my maiden name, so that my passport matched my ticket. It involved several phone calls, and I was told explicitly to never do that again. Oops.
I had a lovely trip to Toronto, but the airline staff definitely instilled a fear in me – it was worth paying $110 to not have to deal with that. So once I had a gap between trips (I still had to fly to Copenhagen and Fortaleza, after all), I replaced my passport. It seems as penance for abusing the system, I now have a truly heinous passport photo for the next several years, but hey – my name’s right.
El Furniture Warehouse 
Bata Shoe Museum 
El Furniture Warehouse