Lopez and Affleck married in a small ceremony on the weekend, culminating a relationship that has stretched over two decades and two engagements
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck got married in a Las Vegas drive-through chapel late on Saturday night, culminating a relationship that stretched over two decades in two separate romances and headlined countless tabloid covers.
Lopez announced their marriage on Sunday in her newsletter for her fans, On the J Lo, with the heading “We did it”. Lopez initially made their engagement public in April on the same newsletter.
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in 2003
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“Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out love is patient. Twenty years patient,” she wrote in a message, signed Jennifer Lynn Affleck.
Lopez wrote that the couple flew to Las Vegas on Saturday, stood in line for their license with four other couples and were wed just after midnight at the Little White Chapel, a chapel boasting a drive-through “tunnel of love”.
Lopez said a Bluetooth speaker played their brief march down the aisle.
“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,” she wrote.
“Stick around long enough and maybe you’ll find the best moment of your life in a drive through in Las Vegas at 12.30 in the morning and at 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.”
News of their nuptials first spread on Sunday after the Clark county clerk’s office in Nevada showed that the pair obtained a marriage license that was processed on Saturday. The marriage license filing showed that Lopez was taking the name Jennifer Affleck.
Representatives for Affleck have declined to comment.
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, citing “excessive media attention” in a statement announcing it would be postponed.
“When we found ourselves seriously contemplating hiring three separate ‘decoy brides’ at three different locations, we realised that something was awry,” the couple said in a joint statement in 2004, before they split.
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.
