Keep in mind that for international travel your bags have to be checked in an hour before departure or bags won't make the flight.
A quick, off-topic story, if you don't mind:
I was flying from my home airport (in USA) to London (UK) on Air Canada via Toronto. Because there is only one flight per day on AC from this airport, the check-in desk crew doubles as the gate crew. So... I arrived about 58 minutes prior to departure, and by then the desk crew had abandoned their post and headed to the gate. I was therefore unable to check my too-big-to-carry-on bag. Well... I headed to the men's room and dumped anything I could not carry on, and went to TSA. I squeezed the bag thru TSA. The flight to Toronto was on a Canadair (regional) jet, so I said nothing and gate-checked it.
At the gate in Toronto, as I was preparing to board the flight to London, the gate agent spied my oversize bag, and insisted that it needs to go under the plane and handled like a checked bag. OK.... so they tagged the bag and told me to drop it at the bottom of the jet bridge. However, I didn't want to be burdened by the wait at baggage claim in London, so I rolled that sucker right into the 787.... and it fit nicely in the overhead bin!!!
(I did check it on the way home...)
<end of post hijack>
