Through focus group interviews with Singaporean youth, this study partially replicates Williams and Guest's (2005) research on urban middle-class attitudes towards marriage in Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines. In line with the original findings, Singaporean men and women value marriage as a desired milestone in life. Female participants were dissatisfied with local men for being unromantic and male participants saw women's expectations as unrealistic. Using Eva Illouz's (1997) conceptualization of romantic love as a key domain in which capitalist, profit-driven logic and values operate, I analyze the dilemma of who and when to marry as a product of state discourses and policies geared towards modernizing the nation through economic and technological excellence. To bridge the gap between Singaporeans' high professional and personal expectations, and the contingent realities that exist in an unpredictable global economy, future policies need to address both practical and ideational considerations relating to love, marriage and family.