Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck secretly marry

Twenty years after they first started dating, the Hollywood couple have tied the knot.

Twenty years after they first started dating, the Hollywood couple have tied the knot.

Twenty years after Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez first got engaged, they have finally tied the knot in a secret Las Vegas wedding.

Over that time, they both had other serious, high-profile relationships and now have five children between them. They reunited in 2021 to much fanfare. 

The pair got a marriage license in Clark County, Nevada on Saturday, July 16, according to documents obtained by TMZ, which show JLo would legally change her name to Jennifer Affleck.

Lopez revealed details about the small ceremony to fans in her newsletter on Monday.

We "barely made it to the little white wedding chapel by midnight," she wrote, and took "pictures in a pink Cadillac convertible, evidently once used by the king himself".

She wore "a dress from an old movie" and Ben wrote "a jacket from (his) closet".

"In the end, it was the best possible wedding we could have imagined. One we dreamed of long ago and one made real (in the eyes of the state, Las Vegas, a pink convertible, and one another) at very, very long last," she wrote.

“Stick around long enough and maybe you’ll find the best moment of your life in a drive-through in Las Vegas at twelve-thirty in the morning and at the tunnel of love drive-through, with your kids and the one you’ll spend forever with. Love is a great thing, maybe the best of things - and worth waiting for."

Affleck, now 49, and Lopez, 52, met on the set of the abysmally-rated 2001 film Gigli.

At the time, Lopez was married to her second husband Cris Judd. When they separated in mid-2002, Affleck and Lopez started dating.

"Bennifer" was born with Affleck's soft-launch in JLo's career-making Jenny from the Block music video.

Affleck proposed to Lopez in 2002, shortly after the video premiered, but the couple "postponed" the wedding "due to excessive media attention" and fears the happiest day of their lives could be "compromised".

"When we found ourselves seriously contemplating hiring three separate 'decoy brides' at three different locations, we realised that something was awry." A few months later, they split.

Lopez married singer Marc Anthony in late 2004 and they had twins about four years later. They separated in 2011. Her next high-profile relationship was with baseball player Alex Rodriguez, which began in 2019 and to whom she was engaged.

Jennifer Lopez and her then-husband Marc Anthony arrive at the 2005 Billboard Latin Music Awards. Picture: Paul Hawthorne/Getty Images

Affleck also moved on with Jennifer Garner. The pair married in mid-2005 and had three children together. They officially divorced in 2018.

When Lopez and Rodriquez broke up in April 2021, Bennifer rekindled their long-lost romance.

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner arrive at the 2014 Vanity Fair Oscar Party. Picture: C Flanigan/WireImage

Affleck proposed in April with a giant green diamond ring. "I always say the colour green is my lucky colour. Maybe you can remember a certain green dress," she told fans in her newsletter. 

"I feel so lucky and happy and proud to be with him. It’s a beautiful love story that we got a second chance," Lopez told People in February. 

Credit: On the JLo newsletter

"We're older now, we're smarter, we have more experience, we're at different places in our lives, we have kids now, and we have to be very conscious of those things," she told People.