Goodbye Jennifer Lopez and say hello to Jennifer Lynn Affleck.
The music icon has confirmed that she has officially tied the knot with Hollywood star Ben Affleck in a hush-hush private ceremony on Saturday night in a Las Vegas chapel, culminating a relationship that stretched over two decades in two separate romances and headlined countless tabloid covers.
Lopez announced their marriage Sunday in her newsletter On the JLo for fans with the heading ‘We did it.’ In the special message to her fans, the ‘Jenny from the Block’ singer shared details about the wedding in Vegas.
“Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out love is patient. Twenty years patient. Exactly what we wanted. Last night we flew to Vegas, stood in line for a license with four other couples, all making the same journey to the wedding capital of the world,” posted the singer.
Lopez continued: “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 recognize us as partners and to declare our love to the world through the ancient and nearly universal symbol of marriage. We barely made it to the little white wedding chapel by midnight.”
And yes, there was pink Cadillac as well, which was apparently once used by Elvis Presley himself. While the impersonator ‘was in bed’, according to Lopez, the car was available for Mrs and Mr Ben Affleck to capture memorable moments from their night.
“So with the best witnesses you could ever imagine, a dress from an old movie and a jacket from Ben’s closet, we read our own vows in the little chapel and gave one another the rings we’ll wear for the rest of our lives,” Lopez continued in the newsletter, with reports later confirming that the witnesses were their children, Emme and Max Muniz, along with Affleck’s children, Violet, Seraphina, and Samuel Affleck.
“They even had Bluetooth for a (short) march down the aisle. But in the end it was the best possible wedding we could have imagined. 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,” Lopez added, with words of a promise to love each other forever.
“When love is real, the only thing that matters in marriage is one another and the promise we make to love, care, understand, be patient, loving and good to one another. We had that. And so much more,” she added, while thanking the Little White Wedding chapel for the “best night of our lives,” while filled with gratitude for letting her use the break room to change into one of two gowns she wore on the night while the groom changed in the men’s room.
“They were right when they said, ‘all you need is love’. We are so grateful to have that in abundance, a new wonderful family of five amazing children and a life that we have never had more reason to look forward to. Stick around long enough and maybe you’ll find the best moment of your life in a drive through 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,” she concluded, signing off as Mrs. Jennifer Lynn Affleck.
News of their nuptials first spread Sunday after the Clark County clerk’s office in Nevada showed that the pair obtained a marriage license that was processed Saturday. The marriage license filing showed that Lopez plans to take the name Jennifer Affleck.
Lopez, 52, and Affleck, 49, famously dated in the early 2000s, spawning the nickname ‘Bennifer,’ before rekindling their romance last year. They earlier starred together in 2003’s ‘Gigli’ and 2004’s ‘Jersey Girl.’ Around that time, they became engaged but never wed.
Affleck married Jennifer Garner in 2005, with whom he shares three children. They divorced in 2018.
Lopez has been married three times before. She was briefly married to Ojani Noa from 1997-1998 and to Cris Judd from 2001-2003. She and singer Marc Anthony were married for a decade after wedding in 2004 and share 14-year-old twins together. — With additional inputs from AP
