Jennifer Lopez looks back on her canceled wedding to Ben Affleck.
The couple were due to marry in September 2003, but the ceremony was suddenly postponed four days ago. According to People magazine , a statement released by Lopez and Affleck at the time cited "undue media attention" as the reason for the cancellation.
More than 20 years later, the "This Is Me...Now" star opened up about the wedding that never happened and revealed the impact of the postponement on their relationship during a Feb. 14 interview with Apple Music 1's Zane Lowe "Suspicions arose" which ultimately led to their split in January 2004.
"I knew in my heart that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, I knew that. But it felt like we weren't going to make it," she continued. "So, that scares me."
Lopez also cited their age as another reason for the split, adding that she and Affleck weren't "mature enough" to get married at the time.
"Even though he's in his twenties and I'm in my early thirties... we're not ready to deal with it and just look at each other and go, what we have is real and we need to put our best foot forward and we need to do some work," she shared road. "We're just not there yet."
Bennifer rekindles relationship
Lopez and Affleck first met while filming the 2002 romantic comedy Gilly together. At the time, Lopez was married to ex-husband Chris Judd, whom she divorced that same year.
The couple, who came to be known as "Bennifer," announced their engagement in November 2002 and were in a relationship for more than a year before splitting just four months after their planned wedding in 2003.
Lopez later married singer Marc Anthony in June 2004. The couple had two children, twins Max and Emme, and divorced in 2014.
In 2005, Affleck married Jennifer Garner. The two welcomed three children together and ended their marriage in 2015.
Affleck and Lopez rekindled their relationship in the summer of 2021, eventually getting married in 2022 — nearly two decades after their original wedding was called off.
Lopez told Apple Music 1's Zane Lowe that Affleck came back into her life at the right time.
"It wasn't until we both finished it, which I know was a lot of work for me, that I started thinking, 'You know what? I'm totally fine on my own. I'm calm, I love my life... just in That’s when he came back,” she concluded.
