Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck Wedding Weekend

Recall, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck tied the knot officially on the 20th of August 2022. In a recent newsletter released by Jennifer Lopez, she shared what the wedding weekend was like, while entertaining us with  beautiful photos.

She wrote

"That is one of my favorite lines that Ben wrote from a movie he directed called “Live By Night”. He also said it the night of our wedding reception in his speech, and I thought...how perfect.

It had rained at sunset every day that week. Everyone was worried about the heat, the aptly named ‘love bugs,’ the details, would the guests all arrive on time, etc. — not to mention the thunder and lightning that arrived almost on cue each day at the exact time the ceremony was supposed to start that Saturday. Oh, and all of us caught a stomach bug and were recuperating ‘til late in the week, that, and along with a few other unexpected setbacks, had all the makings of a doozie of a wedding weekend.

The truth is, I never had one doubt. All week I felt the calm and easy certainty that we were in God’s hands...

At six forty-five, Saturday, August twentieth, the sun broke free and cast its rays like little diamonds dancing across the river behind the makeshift altar in our backyard. The sky was clear blue, and distant clouds of pure white held fast in the sky. As the sun set behind the live oaks draped in Spanish moss, a warm breeze swept over the lawn where our closest family and friends sat 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...

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. 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.

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. 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.

On their rehearsal dinner, she wrote...

"Ben and I laughed the night before about getting married again at our age. We had both been married before and we aren’t exactly kids any more but somehow now seemed like the only age that made sense. I had recently read something Rainer Marie Rilke wrote in “Letters to a Young Poet” about love. He said one has to be ready for love. “For one human to love another is the most difficult task. It is the work for which all other work is merely preparation.” Being able to love someone so that you want to be better for them and make them happy, because giving happiness and love becomes more joyful than receiving it, is true sublime adult love.

Rilke believed love must be learned and learning time is long. One has to become whole for the sake of another person so that two solitudes ‘border, protect and greet each other.’ Merging and surrendering takes wisdom, self-awareness and is nearly impossible in the heat of youthful impatience.

On their reception, here is what she had to say...

"The truth is everyone’s story is different and we all have our paths to travel. No two people are the same. But for us, this was perfect timing. Nothing ever felt more right to me, and I knew we were finally “settling down” in a way you can only do when you understand loss and joy and you are battle tested enough to never take the important things for granted or let the silly insignificant nuisances of the day get in the way of embracing every precious moment. We find ourselves in that long-desired time of life: having gratitude for all that life has shown us, even its trials and tribulations. That night really was heaven..