Why Jennifer Lopez Had Marc Cohn Surprise Ben Affleck with This Song at Their Georgia Wedding
Jennifer Lopez is detailing one of the special moments she and Ben Affleck shared at their Georgia wedding thanks to singer Marc Cohn.
After privately tying the knot in Las Vegas, Lopez, 53, and Affleck, 50, the couple celebrated their nuptials Saturday, Aug. 20, alongside friends and family on the grounds of Affleck's 87-acre compound outside Savannah, Georgia.
During the event, Lopez surprised her now-husband with a performance by "Walking in Memphis" hitmaker Cohn, who sang as Lopez walked down the aisle.
Sharing her and Affleck's decades-old love for Cohn, Lopez said in her On the JLo newsletter on Thursday, "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."
OnTheJLo and John Russo Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck
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Still, it wasn't "True Companion" that Cohn sang during Lopez's big moment.
"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," she said.
The Second Act actress continued, "The 20 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."
She pointed out that along with making a commitment to one another, they were also "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."
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OnTheJLo and John Russo
Lopez is mom to 14-year-old twins Emme and Max, whom she shares with ex-husband Marc Anthony. Affleck is dad to Samuel, 10, as well as Seraphina, 13, and Violet, 16, with ex-wife Jennifer Garner.
In her newsletter, Lopez said that once Violet completed her walk down the aisle, Cohn began to sing "True Companion," a song she and Affleck "first listened to together what seemed both like yesterday and forever ago — and life came, strangely, beautifully, mysteriously, divinely full-circle."
As for how the Argo actor and director felt in the moment, Lopez wrote that after the ceremony "he 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."
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"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."
She confessed that she would have experienced similar sentiments "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."
OnTheJLo and John Russo Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck
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"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," wrote Lopez.
The newlyweds were first engaged in 2002, when Affleck bought the Georgia estate, and split in 2004. They rekindled their romance in April 2021.
