Jennifer Lopez is ready to tell all (she wants to, anyway) about her three-day Georgia wedding to Ben Affleck. The singer sent out a new On the JLo newsletter, featuring select photos of her and Affleck from the ceremony and details on all the festivities, from ceremony to reception to day-after brunch.
She wrote that Affleck used the line, “This is heaven. Right Here. We’re in it now,” during his wedding speech and that despite rain and some unexpected incidents during the celebration, Lopez believed their official wedding for family and friends would be perfect.
“The truth is, I never had one doubt,” she wrote. “All week I felt the calm and easy certainty that we were in God’s hands…”
The sky cleared just in time for the ceremony, “and, at long-last, I started my walk down the stairs that would become the aisle that would lead me toward the rest of my life. Ahhhhh…it was actually happening…” Lopez recalled.
“Ben and I talked about Marc Cohn’s ‘True Companion’ as the perfect wedding love song in this very house more than twenty years ago,” she continued. “Though Ben didn’t know, I asked Marc to surprise him by singing it at our wedding and he was lovely and generous to come. As I walked down the aisle, the first song he played wasn’t ‘True Companion’ however. It was his ‘The Things We’ve Handed Down’—a song about the wonderful mystery of children—something we could only guess at back then, but it was the perfect choice as our five children preceded me on the walk. The twenty years between those dreams of youth and the adult world of love and family we embraced that day, brought more to this marriage than either of us ever could have imagined. We weren’t only marrying one another; we were marrying these children into a new family. They were the only people we asked to stand up for us in our wedding party. To our great honor and joy, each one did.”
“As the eldest of our children finished her walk, Marc began ‘True Companion,’ a song we first listened to together what seemed both like yesterday and forever ago—and life came, strangely, beautifully, mysteriously, divinely full-circle,” Lopez reflected.
“Later Ben told me that the chords of the song and seeing Marc Cohn both shocked him and allowed him to feel the way both roads we had walked found their way, inevitably, inexorably, and perfectly together,” she continued. “And when he saw me appear at the top of the stairs that moment it both made absolute sense while seeming still impossibly hard to believe, like the best dream, where all you want is never to awaken. I would have had many of the same thoughts probably had I not been focusing so hard on not tripping over my dress, but when I got close enough to see his face, it made the same wonderful sense to me. Some old wounds were healed that day and the weight of the past finally lifted off our shoulders. Full-circle—and not at all the way we planned it. Better.”
Lopez teased that she would send decor details out in future emails (she designed it, and “the vibes were down-home, rustic country-chic”). Photos shared in her email showcased reception fireworks and different table setting styles, from all white and green for the wedding to different shades of pink for the rehearsal dinner. You can subscribe to see everything On the JLo.
Images that Lopez shared of the couple’s rehearsal dinner.
Photos of Lopez and Affleck’s reception.
Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she’s not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.
