I know it’s silly to get invested in celebrity relationships, but if I’m being totally honest, I am absolutely invested in the relationship between Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck. I can’t help it. I’m a sucker for love stories, and their love story has spanned the course of decades. I want them to ride off into the sunset, live happily ever after, and share Hollywood-style kisses with spinning cameras until they are in their 90s. It would be easy to imagine that this most recent of J.Lo’s weddings and marriages will end in divorce like her three prior ones, but no, I am not jaded. Or maybe I’m just a hopeless romantic.
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I want to believe that unlike her marriages to Ojani Noa, Cris Judd, and Marc Anthony, this marriage to Ben Affleck will be the one that sticks. Only time will tell, but in the meantime, as history unfolds, let’s take a look back at all of Jennifer’s weddings thus far. She’s had more than most have, and a couple really didn’t last very long at all, but this latest one could be the ONE! I really hope they don't break my heart or each other's.
Ojani Noa was her first husband.
Jennifer met her first husband, Ojani Noa, in Miami circa 1994. She was in the movie Blood and Wine, and he was a waiter at a restaurant that she went to. According to Ojani, they first met over a plate of fries that he was delivering to someone else when she stopped him to say that the fries looked good and she was hungry. He gave her the fries and went back to the kitchen to get some more for the table that had actually ordered them.
They dated for three years before getting married.
After a couple of more visits to the restaurant, Ojani says that Jennifer gave him her number, and that’s when things got started. When she was filming in Los Angeles, he would use a pay phone to call her from the restaurant he worked at whenever he could get a chance.
They got married in 1997.
Jen wore a long white dress with spaghetti straps. Her hair was up in a large bun with flowers in it. Her engagement ring featured a pear-shaped diamond ring on a fold band. They were married on February 22, 1997, and got divorced on January 1, 1998.
Jennifer’s second husband was choreographer and dancer Cris Judd.
They met in Spain on the set of her “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” video back in 2000. “When Jennifer walks in, I shake her hand, and we kinda look at each other — and in my head, I’m like, 'Oh my God, I’m going to marry this woman,'” Cris said in a 2013 episode of Oprah: Where Are They Now?
At first, they kept their relationship a secret.
"Whenever we would leave a place we would leave separately," Cris said. "I guess the first introduction to me being with her was when we were at the Oscars. It was just bedlam. I've never seen so many people concentrated in one place, especially cameras. I knew she was there to do a job, and so I was just that guy who was just by her side."
Cris and Jennifer got married in September 2001.
The ceremony, which was held at a private residence in Calabasas, California, was supposed to be private, but someone tipped off the paparazzi. Jennifer wore a beautiful white lacy wedding dress by Valentino. Her hair was pulled back, and she wore a lovely veil.
They split in 2002.
Her marriage to Cris lasted longer than her marriage to Ojani, but it was still pretty short-lived. They announced their split in June 2002, and their divorce was finalized on January 26, 2003. Jen had already started dating Ben Affleck, and they almost got married in 2003 but decided to postpone their wedding. They ended things for good in 2004.
And then there was Marc Anthony.
Shortly after Bennifer 1.0 broke up, Jen and Marc Anthony found their way to each other romantically. They had been friends for quite some time and had even dated each other a bit in 1999. Just a few months into their romantic relationship, they decided to get married.
On June 5, 2004, Jen and Marc tied the knot.
This time around she had a small ceremony in the backyard of her home in Los Angeles. Forty people were invited to witness their union. For a while, no one outside their personal circle knew if they had actually gotten married or not. Then, in February 2005, Jen confirmed that they had indeed gotten married.
They separated in 2011.
Their divorce was finalized in 2014, but they are united for life because during their marriage they had twins together on February 22, 2008. Their twins, Emme and Max, are very important to them, and Jen and Marc have remained in each other’s lives because they are committed to co-parenting.
And then came the reboot of Bennifer.
Fast-forward to April 2021. Jennifer and her then fiancé, Alex Rodriguez, issued a statement that they were breaking up because they were “better as friends.” Ben Affleck also found himself single around the same time, and he and Jennifer decided to date again. They confirmed that they were seeing each other in July 2021.
On April 8, 2022, Jen announced her engagement to Ben.
She invited fans to sign up for her newsletter to share what she called a “Major announcement!!!” The announcement was that she and Ben were engaged again. In a subsequent newsletter, she shared that he had proposed to her while she was taking a bath. "I was taken totally off guard and just looked in his eyes smiling and crying at the same time 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," Jen shared.
On July 16, 2022, Jennifer Lopez became Jennifer Affleck.
On a whim of sorts, Bennifer 2.0 headed to Las Vegas and got married at the world famous Little White Wedding Chapel. "We did it. Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out that love is patient. Twenty years of patience,” she wrote in her newsletter.
The bride wore two dresses.
I mean, why wear one dress when you can wear two? One of the dresses Jen wore for her union to Ben was a simple sleeveless Alexander McQueen design. The fabric was a floral jacquard, and it was actually a dress that she had been saving for years. “I’ve had this dress for so many years, and I’ve just been saving it, saving it, saving it, and now I’m wearing it on my wedding day,” she revealed.
The other dress she wore was an off-the-shoulder number.
It’s from Zuhair Murad’s bridal collection and had long sleeves, a long train, and a corseted bodice. To go with the dress, she opted for a lovely veil. She looked stunning and truly happy. Ben wore a white tuxedo jacket with black pants and a bow tie.
