I find this topic very interesting. Some people think that names are arbitrary and really not all that meaningful, yet look at how much discussion this thread has generated. From the time I had my first crush I would practice writing "Mr. and Mrs. Homer D. Poe" over and over again in my notebooks. I always wanted to get married and never questioned that I would one day take my husbands name.
When we did get married, I took his name although I did feel some pangs at losing my maiden name because my parents only had two girls. I found it an interesting experience having a new name and getting used to that transition in my life.
I never even entertained the idea of hyphenating our names because they are both very similar with just two consonents different so it would have been something like "Mrs. Ali Swoon-Broom"
(Edit: O'kay so three consonents are different in that example but you get the idea!)
My younger sister just got married (in a cool ceremony on the beach of Lake Michigan) and they've done something I've never heard of before. She kept her maiden name as a middle name and took his as her last, no hyphenating. Not to unusual, but, he also took her maiden name as a middle name. I never thought of keeping my maiden name as a middle, however I already have two middle names and therefore would've ended up with five names. And there'd still be that Swoon-Broom thing.
I know a couple where they both took each others name and did the hyphen route. It's flows pretty funny because she's chinese and he's norweigen and the names couldn't be more different!
Ali