Keeping/changing surnames has generally run along along of tradition, not about love and all that jazz.
I see a few posters have gone for the old "if my wife loved me she would change her name" type responses. One of the said posters openly seems to have a thing for third world Spanish speakers - who.... keep their own names when married, and who pass parts of both their names to the children (in most case, their paternal side surnames). There's several hundred million of those. I'll have to check with the ones I know to see if their marriages are less valid. We could then add the 1.5 billion odd Chinese who don't, 80 odd million Koreans... and speaking of Koreans, just across the sea in Japan, it's the complete opposite: Japanese couples can't, by law, have different surnames (was recently challenged in their courts and lost). Viva la difference, hey?
Some of the above examples will adopt husband's surnames informally, or just go with however they are addressed by others without fuss. My own marriage falls into this. Mrs CD kept her name officially for now - it makes running her business affairs in her home country much easier. Is genuinely not a big deal - its not like either of us put our foot down, we simply maintained the status quo. Loking back, a small part of it also was the fact hat when we got married the "first" time, it was in a traditional ceremony (overseas), but had no legal status I(in Mrs CD's home country you have a big traditional wedding and then a few days later go unto a registry type office to sign off, as opposed to wedding in Australia where its all done at once).
A couple of years passed before thought we'd better get around to doing the legal thing - we found it easier for things like transferring assets, and as we were looking to adopt from overseas,in the majority of cases, it was easier to be "legally" married, so off to the registry we went... by the time all this had occurred, we'd kind of forgotten about the name thing, it simply never got discussed. As her family/business affairs overseas slow down, and we look to have more kids, her thoughts have changed/started, and I can see her making the official switch before our eldest starts school in three years. Overall, I think in the long term is will possibly make things a more convenient, and remove a bit of the old stigma clearly on display here, but its not as if it will change anything within the family unit. I have heard some women say that they felt closer/more of a family unit their name change (the most vocal one actually from one of the Latin countries mentioned above), and who knows, it might on our case too. I guess we'll wait and see.
We often receive paperwork and correspondence in common name, and not once have we sought to correct anybody or really cared. we really don't give a rats either way, or care about any snide people who know absolutely nothing about us, about the ins and outs of our lives. I think the events that have happened to me and my family in the past year or so has shown/confirmed what's important to me, and if you want to result to insults or feel superior because of a surname, up to you I guess.