Mrs Rosero. Regina Rosero. Regina Layug-Rosero. I suppose this change has been en route for the past 6 years, but it’s still a little jarring to see sometimes.

A few months ago I received an invitation to a press conference, something I had to attend for work. The letter was addressed to “Ms. Regina Rosero”.

Back in June, I requested copies of our marriage certificate from the NSO. Naturally, I used my maiden name when I filed the request. A week later, Air 21 delivered the documents to our house. The village guard called our house and asked, “Meron po ba diya’ng Layug, Regina? May Air 21 delivery po kasi,” said Bernadette, our security guard.

“Ako yun,” I said, laughing. It’s funny, but sometimes it stings a little that there are people who will not know me by my own name.

It isn’t a new story, or a new feeling. For decades women have had to struggle with the question, “Why must I take my husband’s name?” If it isn’t your husband’s, it’s your father’s name. What name is really your own anyway?

For decades, women have tried to solve the problem. Many have accepted their multiple roles as independent women, as wives, as daughters, as sisters, as mothers, and they have chosen to embody this multitude of roles by hyphenating. Many are hyphenated women.

I think I first encountered the term in college. As a Literature major, I studied various texts about identity, gender, culture, and so on, and you can’t read all that literature without having to read all sorts of critique and analysis and crap. I never enjoyed literary theory, but (naturally, I suppose) I enjoyed women’s studies. Women’s identities as they transformed from one form to another, as they shifted from daughter and sister to lover and wife, then to the all-encompassing role of mother. But though we grow and move from one role to another, we never really shed our old skins. They cling to us throughout our lives, and that multiplicity is encompassed in that tiny hyphen, the one that bridges our old identities with the new.

I’ve been surrounded by hyphenated women all my life. My mother, also a writer, raised me in the company of her friends from college, collectively known as the Sisterhood. The Sisterhood is composed of writers, strong women who had strong feelings and opinions about women’s lib, women’s health, women’s rights, everything women. And three of them who were married chose to hyphenate their professional names, such that all who read their work knew that they had identities and personalities of their own before they married.

So it’s funny how, eight years after college, here I am, a Hyphenated Woman myself.

There’s no point in hyphenating my last name legally, as that will just cause confusion when my given name is already so kilometric. So I decided to change my name in all my legal papers to my married name.

As I consulted various friends, it’s funny how so many of them said, “But you don’t have to do that.” It seems more of my friends are pro-Independent Woman than I realized. And I had to say to them, “I know, but when we have kids they’ll carry my husband’s name anyway, and if I use a different name there will be confusion legally, and I’d like to avoid all that.”

But I did consider keeping my name. For a brief moment before I applied for a new postal ID, I saw my name written out with my husband’s last name, and there was a little stab at my heart. Is this how it feels to shed an old life and start anew? How many other women have felt this sense of loss as they bid their father’s name goodbye and accepted their husband’s as their own? I am not the first, and I certainly won’t be the last, but that didn’t make the shock of my new name any less startling.

Then I went ahead and filled up the form, and presented the marriage certificate, and the clerk at the post office banged away at her typewriter, the typebar emphatically spelling out my new name: Regina Teresita Magdalena L. Rosero. A week later I claimed my new ID, and I stared at it with fascination as I contemplated my new identity. I joked to my neighbor and college friend, Mary Ann, “Look, I no longer exist! A new person has taken my place!”

Though legally Regina Teresita Magdalena Layug no longer exists, all my bylines now use Regina Layug-Rosero. I insist on this, because despite my hullaballoo about shedding the identity I had established over my 28 years, I am actually proud to carry my husband’s name. Like many women before me, I embrace my new identity, my new family, my new name. My in-laws are wonderful people who accept me not as a daughter-in-law, but as their own daughter, and my brother-in-law is as close to me as my own blood brother. No longer am I simply the daughter of Marian and Fer, but also of Baby and Boy; no longer am I simply sister to Victor, but now also to Ron; no longer am I simply myself, Regina, but now I am also wife to Oneal.

I’m proud to be this new person, even if it does still take some getting used to. But it’s all me.

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Just discovered these videos posted by Oneal’s brother, Ron. Here are Oneal and his parents waiting for the processional to start. This video and the ones I’ll post next were taken with a Flip camera.

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Rihanna and Chris Brown in Manila

I suppose my version of the story is a little different from Oneal’s, because I spent an hour and a half driving from Antipolo to Makati while Oneal was stressing out in Greenbelt. I was stinky and sweaty and smelly na by the time we got there. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

As Oneal said, for months we had been wondering how to spring the news on our parents. It wouldn’t have been fair to tell one family first, and then the other; we really wanted to tell both families at the same time. But if we scheduled a dinner for everyone to attend, we knew that the parents would immediately figure out what was happening. So we had to be sneaky!

First, we had to find a weekend where we weren’t doing anything, the families were free, and there was no other occasion to celebrate. Then we had to find a venue that was between Parañaque and Antipolo. Then we decided we had to tell the brothers about the wedding, so that they could help convince the parents to go to dinner. Then we had to think up an excuse to get the parents to go to dinner in Makati on a Sunday night. Whew.

Oneal’s parents were going to a wedding on Saturday night, so it had to be Sunday. It was perfect, because Czar’s son, Kyle, was having his birthday party on Sunday afternoon! We could go to Kyle’s, then go to the restaurant, Solihiya, for dinner!

Boo-boo #1: Kyle’s party was moved to Saturday. I knew Mom would be too lazy to go to Makati on a Sunday. So I fibbed and told her that it was Solihiya’s anniversary, and that I had a surprise for her.

Boo-boo #2: Because I had completely forgotten about the Rihanna concert in the Fort, we took C-5. There was no traffic at all on Marcos Highway, crossing the bridge, then on to C-5… until we got to Pasig. Then it was crawling. It was so bad that my leg was beginning to cramp, and my foot slipped and the engine died. Finally we decided to to try to get to EDSA instead.

Boo-boo #3: Oneal and his family got to Greenbelt really early. Naturally Oneal was stressing that we’d bump into each other before getting to Solihiya, so he was touring his parents all around GB5, and making sure they checked out every single store.

Boo-boo #4: Ron arrived in a separate car, and went straight up to Solihiya! Oneal had told his family that Chef Nick had invited them to try the new menu, and Ron was afraid that they wouldn’t be able to get a table. Oneal had to call him and tell him to window-shop with them.

Boo-boo #5: I had told my brother to man my phone so he could communicate with Oneal. Apparently he had neglected to mention that we were in awful traffic. Then he fell asleep. So I took over the phone and had to text while driving. I promise you I don’t do that, but given the situation I had to communicate with my co-conspirator! So when I told Oneal we were headed to EDSA, he was bewildered and he said, “why are you going to edsa? just stay on c5 and take buendia.” I had to explain the horror of the traffic and communicate my misery over text–while navigating Shaw Blvd. and EDSA. Oh I was not a happy driver, and the nearby jeepneys did NOT help.

Once we were on EDSA it was a breeze. Dinner was scheduled for 7:00; we arrived at 8:00! But once we got there and we broke the news, everyone was happy. Mom and I shed a few tears, and Oneal’s dad said he’d been wondering when we’d finally get around to getting married, and my brother was so relieved that he was no longer the only one in the family who knew about the wedding, and I could see a few tears glistening in Tita Baby’s eyes, and Ron was saying we could have a baby first, wedding later, and Czar said he knew what was gonna happen the minute he saw the Rosero family sitting in the restaurant.

Whew. So that’s what happened.

– rej

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For months we had been trying to figure out how to tell our parents about our plans to get married, we couldn’t very well tell our friends too soon, news has a tendency to leak rather quickly. So on November 16, 2008 we tricked our respective families into going all the way to Makati for dinner, they did not know what we were all meeting up in my friend’s restaurant Solihiya in Greenbelt 5.

Good thing more stores opened up in the new Greenbelt 5, Rej got stuck in bad traffic along C5 due to the Rhianna concert in the Fort, while i had to stall while my parents kept wanting to go to the resto for dinner already.

as soon as Rej arrived with her family, we had sat down to order food, everyone still thinking there was a special new menu we were invited to try so nobody ordered a full meal. we sprung the news on them to much surprise, but everyone figured it was inevitable.

speeches & tears all around
– oneal

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