Indiebride | Essays | Mommy Diarist

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Racing toward love
When my motorcycle-racing boyfriend proposed on my 40th birthday, I couldn't tell if it was a joke or a dare.
By Ann Bauer

Strapped!
How the bridal beast is bankrupting the lowly wedding guest
By Sarah Elizabeth Richards

Mommy Diarist
Introducing a new mother -- and a new chapter of IndieBride
By Elise Mac Adam

The Guilty Bride
How can a girl raised to stand on her own two feet learn to stand by her man?
By Rachael Combe

Introducing … IndieEtiquette
Our new column will help you solve all of the sticky, prickly and downright embarrassing predicaments associated with The Big Day.
By Elise Mac Adam

Bride, Unhinged
I know with all certainty that my fiancé is the one for me. So why, three weeks before our wedding, am I falling to pieces?
By Juliet Siler Eastland

When Wedding Dresses Attack!
By Eve Simon

Book Review: The Artful Bride
Salvation for the crafty bride
By Heather Moylan

The B-word
People toss around the term "Bridezilla" and think it's cute. I'd argue it's demeaning.
By Elise Mac Adam

My Best Friends' Weddings
I used to relish being single. But now that everyone around me is getting married, I'm not sure I want to be quite so independent.
By Michelle Hainer

When Bachelors Go Bad
How my fiancee ruined our marriage before it even began
By Gayle Cole

O Brother Wed Art Thou
My little brother's getting married. So why is everyone worried about me?
By Rebecca Traister

The Mythology of Marriage
Our wedding stories end with 'Happily Ever After'. Then comes real life.
By Michelle Chalfoun

A Marriage of My Own
Thirty years after the women's movement, I treasure the choices my mother never had.
By Kate Epstein

Why I Popped the Question
Does choosing to get married make me a traditionalist or a revolutionary?
By Beth Broome

My Wedding, My Way
The secret to a great wedding? Decline all parental help, serve deli sandwiches and insist that your guests dress in their Vegas best.
By King Kaufman

Happily Ever After
Could flirting be the key to a successful marriage?
By Lori Leibovich

Am I Really That Single?
There's nothing more soul-crushing than being the only unmarried woman at a wedding shower.
By Ariel S. Leve

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Fun fact

Introducing a new mother --
and a new chapter of IndieBride

By Elise Mac Adam

SPRING 2005 | In the twenty-first century, there are very few choices one can make that one can't undo if filled with regret. It may be expensive and painful to extract oneself a hideous career, a bad marriage, an unwise bit of plastic surgery, but it is possible. Lately (mostly in those nether pre-dawn hours when reason is on hiatus) I've been considering these spoiled times, when regret is a novelty and decisions can be revoked. I've been contemplating choices that can't be undone because I made one. I am pregnant. My identity will change very soon. I don't know when, but in a matter of days I will become someone different: a mother.

Don't misunderstand. This kid is welcome, wanted, highly anticipated. But in spite of this being something savagely intentional, I still feel uncomfortable -- a spy in the maternal world. I wander through stores, read articles and have conversations alternately desperate for any information that could save me and disinterested, unable to comprehend how I will ever casually use this strange equipment or respond to a child in any way that could possibly be helpful. I fret that my inadequacy will expose me to so much scorn that it will make me alternately embarrassed and furious to show my face on the streets of New York with my child. I am daunted.

If my bones were found 856 years from now in an archaeological dig, my body would be that of a mother. Since I am in the process of becoming something else, now seems an appropriate moment to begin to think about the experience and open up to it productively. This blog will be a sounding board, a rant receptacle. I am full of questions, somewhat ready for adventure, and longing to hear from you out there in the ether. All kinds of issues and plagues have me bursting at the seams: How long will it take me to love my child? What if the kid becomes a serial killer? Does anyone else dislike Caitlin Flanagan with the savagery I do? Why does becoming a mother allow everyone to mind a woman's business for her?

How is that for an invitation? Soon, soon (I hope) I'll be a mother both in theory and practice. You'll hear about it and I hope you'll stick with me as I wrestle with this new job, new identity, new life.

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You can read the indieMom Blog and join in the conversation at http://www.indiebride.com/indiemom/blog/index.html

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Elise Mac Adam is a writer and filmmaker in Manhattan. She has written everything from horror movies (Office Killer) to a wedding guide (City Wedding). While writing the IndieEtiquette column for IndieBride, Elise took on another big project. In February 2005, she gave birth to her son, Felix.

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