Jennifer Lopez Reveals Her Las Vegas Wedding Dress Wasn't From an "Old Movie" After All
A plot twist no one saw coming.
Jennifer Lopez is finally sharing the details behind her swoon-worthy Las Vegas wedding dress, in which she married Ben Affleck in July 2022 in a sleeveless Alexander McQueen gown that featured a classic boatneck design and a textured floral pattern.
At the time, the multihyphenate wrote in her newsletter that it was a "dress from an old movie."
"I've had this dress for so many years," she noted. "And I've just been saving it, saving it, saving it, and now I'm wearing it on my wedding day."
But now, Jennifer is clarifying where she got the timeless bridal look from.
For one, she debunked the rumor that she wore the bridal gown from Jersey Girl, the 2004 rom-com she did with Ben. "No, that's not true," she told Variety in a video published Feb. 13. "I wish it was. I wish I did have that dress."
In fact, J.Lo revealed her bridal gown wasn't worn in a movie at all.
"Believe it or not, I was doing so much press for Marry Me or Shotgun Wedding, so I had all of these wedding dresses in my house," the 54-year-old recalled. "And when we, at the spur of the moment, decided to get married that day, I had a dress."
She added, "It's not from a movie. I never wore it in a movie."
But if there's one thing the Hustlers star has been holding onto for decades, it's her new musical, This Is Me… Now: A Love Story.
"This is a project that I say has been 22 years in the making," she exclusively told E! News the 2024 Golden Globe Awards on Jan. 7, "because I did the This Is Me...Then album 20 years ago in 2002 and then in 2022 I announced that I was gonna make This Is Me...Now and I've been working on it the past couple years."
The timing couldn't have been more perfect. After all, she rekindled her romance with the Oscar winner, 51, nearly a decade after they called off their engagement in the early aughts.
"When we got back together, I felt very inspired," Jennifer shared. "I was like, 'Oh, this is me now.' I think that life can be heart-breaking and it can also be elating, and can also be very funny sometimes when you look back at it."
She continued, "I think this project is really about letting you know what I learned along the way."
But before she debuts her fairytale musical on Amazon Prime Video on Feb. 16, relive all her epic wedding dresses on and off the screen.
For her February 1997 wedding to the Cuban waiter, Lopez donned a lace column dress and adorned her hair with white flowers.
The Selena star sported a stunning beaded Valentino gown for her September 2001 nuptials with Judd, a back-up dancer who appeared in the music video for her hit song "Love Don't Cost a Thing."
No official photos were released from Anthony and Lopez's June 2004 ceremony, which was held in the backyard of her Beverly Hills home barely six months after she and Ben Affleck ended their first engagement. But we know the bride wore a Vera Wang gown and Neil Lane jewels for the intimate event.
For her Las Vegas wedding to Affleck on July 16—which happened almost twenty years after they first got engaged—Lopez began the celebration in a sleeveless white dress with a classic boatneck neckline, revealing that her first look was a "dress from an old movie."
"I've had this dress for so many years," she wrote in her On the J.Lo newsletter. "And I've just been saving it, saving it, saving it, and now I'm wearing it on my wedding day."
For her second look, the "Waiting For Tonight" singer changed into a white lace off-the-shoulder gown from Zuhair Murad's Spring Summer 2023 Bridal Collection.
"We did it," Lopez gushed. "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."
Lopez briefly wore a simple off-the-shoulder dress for the wedding she couldn't go through with because she was really in love with a doctor who was convinced brown M&Ms were healthy because chocolate is already that color.
But the chic look made a surprising comeback in 2018 when the Internet was convinced the custom-made Givenchy frock Meghan Markle wore at her royal wedding to Prince Harry was inspired by Lopez's dress in the 2001 rom-com.
"I got a lot of texts about Meghan Markle's wedding dress," the movie's costume designer Pam Chilton told Glamour in 2019. "I'm like, 'Well, I'm sure it's a coincidence.' But she was at a good rom-com age when the movie came out—she could have been watching it at sleepovers!"
Before she goes on the run to flee her abusive husband, Lopez's character is seen gets marrying him at the beginning of this 2002 thriller.
Yes, Lopez wore a lot of wedding gowns on the big screen in the early aughts. In the 2005 rom-com-gone-wrong, she almost doesn't make it down the aisle in her SaeYoung Vu Couture corseted gown due to her epic clash with her future MIL, played by Jane Fonda.
While fans never got a full glimpse of the dress Lopez wore to her real-life wedding to Anthony, the couple did get married on-screen in the 2006 drama when they played salsa legend Héctor Lavoe and his wife Nilda "Puchi" Lavoe.
Zuhair Murad designed the showstopping rose gold metallic gown Lopez rocked in the 2022 rom-com. Consisting of nine layers of silk taffeta, horsehair and tulle, the dress was "extremely heavy," costume designer Caroline Duncan told Variety. "The dress weighed 95 pounds and required five people to transport it and an entourage to get Jennifer in and out of it, but it gave the dress that volume."
