Since my last post, my fiance and I have gotten the full blessings of our families, bought our wedding bands, and picked dates for our wedding dinners. Now we’re in Las Vegas, hours away from heading to the Marriage License Bureau to get our official permission to marry. If all goes well, we should be legally wed in two days. I’m impatient — I want to be married, not engaged!

See, I suck as a bride-to-be. Proper brides-to-be don’t cringe when asked about dresses and bouquets, right? And proper brides get skinny for their weddings… while I went on an eating spree.

The idea of dieting before marriage didn’t cross my mind until my trip to Singapore a week ago, when, during a dim sum buffet, a friend remarked that I was “eating like you’re not getting married.” (Of course I wasn’t! It was a buffet!) When I weighed myself that night, I realized I’d gained a kilo for each week I’d been home in Southeast Asia… all seven of them. Seven kilos does make a difference, I realized as I looked at my big butt in the mirror.

With two days to go until our courthouse wedding, it’s a little too late to turn into a skinnier bride, but hey — why should I? Why should any woman be expected to lose weight for her wedding? “So we look our best on our special day!” argued a friend, who is determined to shed the pounds before her wedding photo session. “Because 20 years down the road, you’ll want to look at your wedding pictures and remember how beautiful you were.”

Well, I think it’s depressing to act like everything’s going downhill from here. Why the pessimism? Why let your future self get all nostalgic over a past photo — I plan to be even more beautiful decades from now. By then, maybe I’ll have shed the weight from my prolonged eating trip back home, and look fitter than I did at my wedding. Eat up, brides!