Handling Large Select Boxes

Hello, I have a form for user interaction and part of it is a select box with a large number of options from a database ~12K options. Currently I have a function which queries the DB to get fresh data and loads the HTML (<option value=X>Y</option>) into a string, so the DB is only hit once, but the page still takes a while to load. Anyone else have any experience with something like this, or any other helpful suggestions for making the page load time a little less cumbersome? Thanks! -B