So, it's not something that was considered even 5 years ago I bet: how to change your entire online identity when you get married. Mainly because most people didn't HAVE one. And if they did, it wasn't that extensive.
Well, for a girl growing up as the first generation of the digital age, this is actually an issue for me. Originally I thought "Hey! I just need to change my name on Facebook!" until my friends pointed out to me that my entire life is linked into my current email account. I get emails 24/7- to an account that's branded with my maiden name. Uh oh. This isn't just a matter of sending out a mass email to everyone I know with "I'm married! This is my new email addy!!"...I'm not 14. Bank statements, professional emails, emails from school, EVERY SINGLE ACCOUNT I've ever signed up for...all goes to that account. I know I'm changing my identity, but I don't want to start fresh!! I still want to get my emails telling me about sales and upgrades to software and the random blog updaters! And I don't want to sit in front of a computer for HOURS trying to figure out where I need to change my deets. Or spend the rest of my adult life checking two email accounts. No thank you.
Also, I like my current email address. I got it when Gmail was in it's infancy, and Gmail and I get along great. Only, when I went to sign up for a new Gmail address and guess what? My name is FAIRLY common, STILL! (There go my childhood dreams of a unique last name!) And I don't want to veer to far from what I've got. I didn't realise how attached I was to my email address until the prospect of giving it up was looming over my head.
Then I remembered: Gmail has all these neat things in it that let you send email from another account, even if that other account isn't a gmail address. So I went and got me an account at Mail.com....because then all that's gonna change is my last name, and there'll be no G in front of Mail. Which probably looks better anyways.
So I got it all set up- Gmail imports email sent to that account by POP3 access, and can sent to it through it's servers. If you want deets on how to do this, email me, but basically you just follow the steps under Accounts and Import in your Gmail settings. So I tested that- great, email comes in, email goes out under the correct name. All I've gotta do after the wedding is change my new email address to the default one, and everything will go out under that account, but I can still receive emails to my maiden account, and when I reply to them people will get the new address. Fantastic.
I even got it working with Sparrow! Which is the mail client I use on my Mac. Gmail's cute and all when your 15, but now that I'm an adult I felt like I needed an adult mail client. But I'll gush about Sparrow in another post. Suffice to say, it's also just a matter of changing the new alias to the default account in Sparrow.
Uh oh. PROBLEM!! I still want to use my Gmail account as "THE" account. That's where all my emails will go through, nevermind the name they go out under. But when I send emails on my iPhone, they go out under the name on the account and the email address of the account. Hmm...this looked like the end of the road to my happy "very little work to switch to my married name in the digital age" story. I was looking at having to switch EVERYTHING over to a whole new parent account. And the whole point of this was not to lose every email I've saved since I was 15, and not have to migrate to a new parent account. I want to stay in the apartment and just change the name on the buzzer!!
So I panicked for a second, and then remembered Google knows all and found this after about .5 seconds of searching: http://kevinchiu.org/archives/how-to-use-multiple-email-aliases-on-the-iphone
Basically what it says is that, instead of setting up my mail account on my iPhone AS a Gmail account, I need to set it up as an "other" account, plug in the IMAP server information (which is imap.gmail.com for the incoming and smtp.gmail.com for the outgoing- not exactly rocket science) and put in my Gmail account as the server info, but I can put my MAIL account as the account info on the iPhone.
And guess what? IT WORKS!! Just as well as if I'd set it up using the Gmail wizard. So now when I get married I have 3 buttons to click to go from being lana.XXXX@gmail.com to lana.ZZZZZ@mail.com, but nothing actually changes: I'll still get all my emails. I just have to switch Gmail online to the new address as default, Sparrow to the new address as default, and turn the Mail account on on my iPhone (and turn my maiden name one off!)
VOILA!
Hope that helps someone. It can be done. If you need more specific information with screen shots and stuff let me know and I'll cobble it together. Turns out it IS really easy (if somewhat research intensive) to change your identity in the digital age!
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