Eddie Cantrow, a San Francisco sports shop owner, is single. One day, he attends the wedding of his former fiancée, with whom he spent five years, and finds himself sitting at the “singles table,” which turns out to be filled with children.
During the reception, a purse snatching leads to a confrontation, and Eddie tries unsuccessfully to recover it. The purse’s owner, Lila, later appears at his store, and in their next encounter, she admits she did not come to shop but to see him again. They begin dating, and Lila announces that the environmental research company she works for requires her to move to Rotterdam. Because the company does not deploy married employees abroad, Eddie—urged on by his father Doc and his best friend Mac—marries her after dating for less than two months.
On the drive to their Los Cabos honeymoon, Eddie discovers things about Lila he finds irritating, such as her incessant singing. They stop along the way to have sex for the first time, and Eddie learns that Lila is aggressive in bed. He tries to look past her quirks, but his disaffection grows when she reveals a history of substance abuse that resulted in a deviated septum, causing her to spray drinks out of her nose. He also discovers she had been an unpaid volunteer at her environmental research company, and that the “thief” who tricked her was an ex who she owed money to. Eddie realizes he may have made a mistake marrying her; he is not in love with her, and he cannot stand her bad habits.
On the beach, Lila insists on using baby oil and refuses sunblock despite Eddie’s warnings about the sun. She blames Eddie for the second‑degree sunburn she gets, and distraught, he meets Miranda, a vacationer from Mississippi, who is with her family. Eddie spends most of the honeymoon with Miranda and her kin while Lila is confined to their room due to the sunburn. Miranda’s family all like Eddie except for her cousin Martin, who distrusts him, and a misunderstanding arises when they hear he came to Mexico to mourn his wife who was killed by a maniac.
Eddie eventually contemplates proposing divorce to Lila at lunch, but Martin and his brother Buzz confront him, and Martin shoves a spicy pepper up Eddie’s nose. When Miranda learns about Lila, she accidentally falls into the ocean; Eddie tries to save her and is stung by a jellyfish. Lila treats the stings by urinating on him, even with everybody watching. Eventually, Lila and Miranda both abandon Eddie (Miranda for his lies and Lila for his wish for a divorce). Lila even destroys Eddie’s passport, stranding him in Mexico.
Depressed, Eddie starts to drink heavily and irritates a local with his tales of woe. Coerced by “Uncle Tito,” the hotel owner and a friend of Mac’s, Eddie decides to go to Mississippi to make amends with Miranda. Border patrol agents repeatedly catch him attempting to cross the U.S. border illegally, but he eventually reaches Oxford, Mississippi.
Upon meeting Miranda’s family, Eddie learns that she has married someone else. Despite promising to leave Miranda alone, he sneaks into her room; her husband wakes up when Martin bursts in and attacks Eddie until Doc intervenes. Eddie agrees to leave if Miranda says she truly loves her new husband, which she does. He departs with Doc, not knowing that Miranda still has feelings for him.
Eighteen months later, Eddie is divorced from Lila (who got his store) and lives in Mexico, selling sporting goods on the beach. Miranda later finds Eddie there; she has left her husband and is still in love with him. She, however, is unaware that Eddie has remarried someone named Consuela, leaving him to face the same predicament once again.
