Wedding reservations

First she ate. Then she loved and prayed. And then she moved to New Jersey.

Love her or hate her — she’s either obnoxiously self-indulgent or a lovable free spirit, depending on whom you ask — “Eat, Pray, Love” author Elizabeth Gilbert is back with “Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage.”

The book is a sequel to the Oprah-endorsed first part, which had tour buses full of women heading to exotic locales in hopes of re-creating her transformative experience. “Eat, Pray, Love” (“EPL”) spent 137 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and 57 weeks at No. 1, shipped more than 6 million copies, was published in more than 30 languages and is being turned into a movie starring Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem.

Gilbert at Two Buttons, the import store she opened with her husband.

“EPL” chronicled Gilbert’s messy, post-divorce soul-searching tour, which led her to Italy, India and Bali.

“Committed” deals with her decision to get married again — something she vowed she would never do — to a man she met on her travels. She is forced to deal with her fears and doubts about marriage when her 57-year-old boyfriend “Felipe” (real name: Jose Nunes) is detained in the airport on suspicions that he may have abused the restrictions of his visa. The couple is told by a surly INS agent that unless they tie the knot, Felipe won’t be allowed back in the US.

“In the INS office, my first coded thought was no one must know. And we must do it like pulling off a Band-Aid and we must pretend like we’re going on with our lives,” says Gilbert of her split decision to wed, in spite of her first thought —to dump Felipe rather than marry him.

The 40-year-old author is vague when discussing the specifics of the self-proclaimed “misery” of her first marriage, gently steering away from addressing infidelity. She says that she pays her ex-husband alimony, admitting that writing checks is painful. Seven years after their divorce, they have no contact with each other. Gilbert doesn’t know if he’s read “EPL.” The former couple shares no mutual friends — and their only interaction is when she dreams about him and his new wife, calling it “agitating, eerie and confusing.”

Suffice it to say, Gilbert was surprised to find her case of cold feet forced into question . . . by the American government.

“Because I had such an aversion to it and such a superstitious feeling that this was my doom, by the end of the book I was like, ‘Oh, no, I can do it.’ I always knew I was going to do it. I never felt I was gonna ditch this guy. It’s just I hate doing this.”

While her first marriage was caught up in the frenetic New York social whirl, she describes her current lifestyle with her second husband as one that is far more conducive to staying together.