At last, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck have made it down the aisle and are officially a married couple, the multihyphenate confirmed through her newsletter, “On the JLo,” on July 17. After their first go-round calling off their engagement in 2003 and a romantic reunion 17 years later, the pair finally tied the knot in a small ceremony after obtaining a marriage license in Clark County, NV, on July 16. According to the marriage license obtained by POPSUGAR, Lopez will be changing her name to Jennifer Affleck (which is also how signed her newsletter).
“We did it. Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out love is patient. Twenty years patient,” wrote Lopez. “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.”
Lopez said the couple tied the knot in Vegas’s Little White Wedding Chapel 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 called it “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.”
“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. Best night of our lives,” she wrote. Lopez added that the couple now has “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.”
In addition to her note, Lopez shared some photos and videos from the big night, including some selfies with the groom. She wore her hair half up, half down and in some photos wearing a long-sleeved, off-the-shoulder lace gown. In other images, she wore a white halter-neck dress. Affleck wore a white tux jacket with a black bow tie.
Lopez and Affleck’s storybook romance began decades ago, way before they officially rekindled their relationship in July 2021. The two stars met in 2001 on the set of their rom-com “Gigli” and wasted no time getting engaged the following year. However, just days before their planned 2003 wedding, the two called it quits on their nuptials and relationship due to excessive media attention.
After getting in new relationships — Affleck married and divorced ex Jennifer Garner; Lopez married and divorced ex Marc Anthony and dated Alex Rodriguez — the couple eventually found their way back to each other and got engaged again, revealing the big news in Lopez’s April 12 “On the JLo” newsletter. “Saturday night while at my favorite place on earth (in the bubble bath), my beautiful love got on one knee and proposed,” she wrote of Affleck’s proposal, per Us Weekly. “I was taken totally off guard and just looked in his eyes smiling and crying at the same time.”
The singer added that she was “trying hard to get my head around the fact that after 20 years this was happening all over again. I was quite literally speechless, and he said, ‘Is that a yes?’ I said, ‘YES of course that’s a YES.'”
— Additional reporting by Sabienna Bowman.