Once a woman hits a certain age, the race to the altar is on. With the pressure that society-not to mention friends and family-puts on us, it can feel like the worst thing in the world to be single. But not so! In this excerpt from The Bridal Wave, authors Erin Torneo and Valerie Cabrera Krause set all of us single women straight on why we should be living it up during our “me” years!

Sit Back And Enjoy!
For most of our adolescence we want to be older than we are: We buy Seventeen magazine when we're twelve, finagle fake IDs so we can get into twenty-one-and-over clubs when we're seventeen. Once we're in high school, we want to skip on ahead to college (and college boys). Rarely do we sit back and enjoy where we are right now. Our twenties and thirties are a time of getting to know ourselves, but just when we are figuring out how to live on our own as adults, our friends start talking about cake-cutting fees and our family begins to question our lack of the ultimate accessory: a husband. Great. How can you feel good about where you are?