THREE decoy bridal parties, a pink 6-carat white diamond ring, 400 wedding guests, and the sudden cancellation of their wedding only hours earlier.
The celebrity story of 2003 was Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck announcing their big day in 2003.
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But, almost 20 years later, the couple — nicknamed “Bennifer” — have finally tied the knot in an understated £77 ceremony in Las Vegas in the early hours of Sunday.
Superstar J-Lo, 52, told fans via her weekly newsletter: “Stick around long enough and maybe you’ll find the best moment of your life in Las Vegas at twelve thirty in the morning in the tunnel of love drive-through, with your kids and the one you’ll spend forever with.
“Love is a great thing, maybe the best of things, and worth waiting for.”
Fans who had hoped for the extravagant A-list wedding that the couple had planned years ago will be disappointed.
The couple got married three months ago, just as Ben, 49, proposed to Jennifer while Jennifer was in the bathtub.
The Argo actor’s ex-wife Jennifer Garner, 50, appeared sombre while dropping their three children — Violet, 16, Seraphina, 13, and ten-year-old Samuel — at J-Lo’s home on Saturday.
Jennifer, who had been married to Ben since 2005, posted smiley pictures of her trip to Lake Tahoe the next day.
J-Lo, Ben, and a day of rehearsals in Los Angeles, J. Lo travelled 270 km to Las Vegas.
Instead of a glittering, five-star venue, the couple opted for Sin City’s Little White Chapel.
It is also where Britney sang the famous “I do” song to Jason Alexander, her childhood friend. Britney later annulled the marriage 55 hours later.
While Jennifer got ready with make-up artist and close friend Chris Appleton in the chapel’s break area, Ben — dressed in a white tux — filmed himself in the pink-tiled men’s toilet, revealing: “And this is my changing area.”
Chris later uploaded a clip of J.Lo wearing the first of her two wedding dresses, a sleeveless ivory design. “old movie”.
She said: “I’ve had this dress for so many years. I’ve just been saving, saving, saving it and now I’m wearing it.”
The Hustlers actress then changed into an off-the-shoulder lace gown by Zuhair Murad, which can cost upwards of £4,000.
Bennifer waited with four other couples to say their vows.
J-Lo said: “Behind us two men held hands and held each other.
“In front of us, a young couple who made the three-hour drive from Victorville on their daughter’s second birthday — all of us wanting the same thing — for the world to recognise us as partners and to declare our love to the world through the ancient and nearly universal symbol of marriage.”
As well as Ben’s children, Jennifer’s 14-year-old twins Emme and Max — from her seven-year marriage to singer and third husband Marc Anthony — were also in attendance.
Half past midnight, the blended family sat down in a pink Cadillac and took their vows. The couple had decided not to hire an Elvis impersonator.
J-Lo explained: “If we wanted Elvis himself to show, that cost extra and he was in bed.”
She added: “We read our own vows in the little chapel and gave one another the rings we’ll wear for the rest of our lives.
“They even had Bluetooth to do a short march down the aisle. We were pleasantly surprised that it turned out to be the best wedding we could imagine.
“One we dreamed of long ago and one made real (in the eyes of the state, Las Vegas, a pink convertible and one another) at very, very long last.”
Bennifer met on the set of box office flop Gigli in 2001 when J-Lo was still married to second husband Cris Judd, a dancer in her Love Don’t Cost A Thing video.
She had already been wed once before, to Cuban waiter Ojani Noa in 1997 — but the marriage fell apart within a year.
Ben starred in J-Lo’s Jenny From The Block music video in 2002 and proposed that November with a blush 6-carat ring.
They were set to wed in a ceremony, reported to cost £1.5million, at the luxury Four Seasons Biltmore Hotel, in Santa Barbara, California.
Designer Vera Wang is thought to have spent eight months designing three dresses for J-Lo, who settled on an 18-tier £16,000 gown.
Ben had also prepared Casey, his actor brother to take the role of best man.
To keep the location secret from the media and fans, their 400 guests — including Ben’s longtime friend and co-star Matt Damon, 51 — were invited by phone and were only told the venue in the days before.
The couple suggested that they would marry in Hawaii or Georgia, to get rid of the paparazzi.
The location was revealed as soon as the event began.
It is believed one disgruntled mother-of-the-bride, whose wedding party had been planning to stay at the same venue, had complained about the fuss surrounding Bennifer’s big day.
They found another venue quickly, but they informed their guests one day before the ceremony that they had postponed the wedding.
‘IT WAS THE MOST ROMANTIC THING’
They issued a statement: “Due to the excessive media attention surrounding our wedding, we have decided to postpone the date.
“When we found ourselves seriously contemplating hiring three separate ‘decoy brides’ at three different locations, we realised that something was awry.”
However, Bennifer divorced the next year.
J-Lo implied that she was a Netflix filmmaker in her Netflix documentary. “racist”Their breakup was caused by the US media’s treatment.
Ben said: “I said to her once ‘Doesn’t this bother you?’
“And she said, ‘I’m Latina, I’m a woman. I expected this. You just don’t expect it. You expect to be treated fairly’.”
While Bennifer’s decision to wed at the Little White Chapel may seem unlikely, J-Lo once said: “I’ve never been married in a church.”
She also added the following to her previous nuptials: “I’ve been married three times, and once was nine months and once was 11 months, so I don’t really count those.”
J-Lo wed Latin star Marc in 2004, but the couple split in 2011.
J-Lo is believed to be on good terms with Ben over the years. He told Instyle in April 2021. “She has great talent, but she has also worked very hard for her success, and I’m so happy for her that she seems, at long last, to be getting the credit she deserves.”
It was the beginning of Bennifer’s reunification when she ended her two-year marriage to Alex Rodriguez (46), amid cheating rumors.
It is thought that they connected while J-Lo was shooting Shotgun Wedding in Dominican Republic, after Ben had sent his ex. “loving and longing” emails.
The couple were spotted in Los Angeles and in Miami, where Jennifer was based, but waited until the Venice Film Festival in September to make their red carpet debut.
In April the couple got engaged — with a giant green-stoned ring — with Jennifer saying she cried tears of joy.
She added: “I was smiling so big, feeling so incredibly happy and whole.
“It was nothing fancy at all, but it was the most romantic thing I could’ve imagined . . . Two people promise to be there for one another every day, even if it’s a quiet Saturday night at their home.
“Two very lucky people, who got a second chance at true love.”
Jennifer said that their relationship was stronger as Jennifer grew older in a recent interview.
She said: “I think we are strong enough now to know what’s real and what’s not, whereas when we were younger maybe some of those outside voices were a little bit tougher for us to reconcile and survive.”
She added: “We’re older now, we’re smarter, we have more experience, we’re at different places in our lives, we have kids now — and we have to be very conscious of those things.”
However, certain things have remained constants for Hollywood stars over the past two decades.
As well as surprising fans with their wedding, there was another shock when the couple’s marriage license revealed J-Lo is dropping her famous moniker to become Jennifer Affleck.
It took Ben and Jennifer almost 20 years, four divorces, to finally find true love.
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