Best practice for uploading large file, previewing, and editing before saving to database?

I am allowing users to upload a relatively large .csv file (about 1MB) - it will contain thousands of records that represent one of my business objects. I want the users to upload the file and then be displayed paged results (after I parse it, add validation messages, etc). They can review/edit the results page by page until they are satisfied. At this point, they'd click a Save button and all of the data would be saved to my database. Alternatively, they could click a Cancel button - this would release all of the uploaded data and none of it would touch my database.

I would prefer to not use "staging" tables in my database. And by that I mean store the uploaded data in my db when it is uploaded and subsequently delete it if the user does chooses to cancel the whole operation. Also, my situation is such that I would have to delete it from the "staging" table even if the user chose to save the data (working with legacy systems).

My question is this: In order to prevent seemingly excessive/unnecessary "staging" tables in my database, is it a bad practice to store ALL of the uploaded file's data (i.e in a byte array or base64 encoded string) in a property on my view model? The intent being to keep this large-ish value on my view model while the user pages through and reviews/edits it.

Although I think this question is fairly technology independent, if it helps, I am using ASP.Net MVC/Web API and an MSSQL database.