Something scary has been happening to me, which started the minute we signed for the marriage license and received that official document permitting us to marry.

I’ve started turning into Bridezilla.

Throughout our engagement, I’ve very much prided myself on not being obsessed with weddings, choosing to cut out the frills and concentrate on planning life after marriage instead of the ceremony. It took me all of fifteen minutes to chose an off-the-rack dress, and I dismissed the idea of bridesmaids and flowers and wedding registries and guest lists and cakes and all the details that seem to drive brides crazy before their big day. The heck with that, I thought — we’ll get married at the courthouse, just the two of us, Carrie and Big style.

And then yesterday happened.

Coming out of downtown Las Vegas’s Marriage License Bureau (which was a perfectly pleasant place), my fiance and I turned left and walked to the Office of Civil Marriages, where we planned to make an appointment for a civil ceremony. I guess I had imagined something grander, a beautiful, polished government building, a formal, dignified place to marry away from Vegas tackiness — instead, we entered what (to me) felt like a dark, dingy, unwelcoming place, where the door to the office was locked, with two security staff who tried their best to ignore our presence, then impatiently answered our inquiries. “Assholes,” my fiance muttered as we left the building. That’s how mad we were.

And that’s when Bridezilla awakened, took a look at her surroundings, and screamed in my head: I DON’T WANT TO GET MARRIED HERE!

The burgeoning Bridezilla in me has been active for 12 hours, and in those 12 hours, she’s already yelled at her poor fiance, sulked, pouted, thrown hissy fits. He wanted to go back to the civil marriage office — “It’s a government building,” he said. “What do we expect? It would be the same in any government building. We just want to get the paperwork done.”

“No!” yelled Bridezilla. “I’m not getting married in that depressing place! This is a once in a lifetime experience! I want something memorable! Something FUN!”

And thus I began my search for a last minute, not overly tacky Las Vegas wedding experience. No Elvis weddings, I promised my beleaguered fiance. But how about a helicopter wedding? Limousine wedding? Wedding out in the Valley of Fire? Hmm? Hmm?

Now, about thirty hours to go until we want to say “I do,” we still haven’t settled on where/how we’re getting married. My simple Vegas wedding is getting complicated, because Bridezilla insists on something more. Let’s see which direction she pulls us in.

Bridezilla also called me a fat bride, but I suppressed her for a while and ate a full rack of Gilley’s baby back ribs for dinner. Yum.