The Mama of “Marry Your Baby Daddy Day” Gets Cold Feet

How a young black Brooklynite found fame as an outspoken opponent of unwed parenthood — then wondered if she had it all wrong.

Illustrations by Corinne Mucha

Two years ago, I couldn’t even leave the house. I made myself invisible as a means of survival.

I was at the center of a media storm related to my landmark event, Marry Your Baby Daddy Day (MYBDD). I produced an all-expense-paid mass wedding for unmarried parents, with the works, from cakes to rings to custom-designed wedding dresses. At the peak of my career I published several novels with a major publishing house, sat with Soledad O’Brien and John Stossel, and basked in the kind of publicity money couldn’t buy. I successfully rallied businesses, community leaders and sponsors to help me strengthen two-parent homes in urban communities.

Like any good idea, it all started in a basement.

In 2005, I was in my late twenties, and after living in Florida for a few years, moved back in with my mom in Brooklyn. St. Martin's Press was just about to publish my third book “Marry Your Baby Daddy,” a novel in which three sisters stand to inherit a small fortune from the…