Recently, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Afek tied the knot in secret in Las Vegas, with the only guests at the ceremony being their children from their previous marriages. Not that the singer and the actor were ashamed of what they had done, but they preferred to share this intimate moment only with their closest people.
Last year, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his fiancee Carrie also had a secret wedding ceremony. They married discreetly at Westminster Cathedral in London in the presence of just 30 guests. Then it became necessary because of the coronavirus restrictions in the country, not allowing the gathering of many people. The Johnson family only organized a big wedding celebration at the end of last month, but this happened more than a year after the marriage ceremony itself.
In the past, a number of other stars have also chosen to marry in secret ceremonies. Sp. “Harper’s Bazaar” recalls some of them. Jay-Z and Beyoncé, Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost, Cameron Diaz and Benji Madden, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher, Ed Sheeran and Cherry Seaborn, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem bet on secret weddings. In the past, secret marriage ceremonies were also organized by star couples Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux and Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, although their marriages ended in divorce.
All this shows a trend in recent years among a number of celebrities not to advertise their marriage ceremony loudly.
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According to specialists in organizing weddings, a similar trend, observed in the past among stars, has recently been observed among ordinary people, notes the French edition of the website “Slate”. After two years of a pandemic, during which many wedding ceremonies were postponed and canceled or marked by restrictions, one would think that ordinary people would want lavish celebrations, with many relatives, with great merriment, with a rich table.
But in fact, secret weddings turn out to be preferred. They save money first. On average, in France, a wedding organized according to generally accepted rules costs an average of 12,000 euros. Discreet weddings also save unnecessary wasting of nerves. It avoids, for example, headaches about the number of guests, about which relatives must be invited to the celebration, about how to arrange the guests at the wedding banquet, so that there are no unpleasant surprises and ex-boyfriends end up next to each other at the table or relatives who hate each other.
British Jess Rudwick, a psychologist and personal development coach, recently married logistician Gerald Davies, and their wedding in London was attended by only four people. Even their parents weren’t invited. After the ceremony, the newlyweds and their witnesses were treated to ice cream and a glass of champagne.
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“It was a very soothing day, a very pleasant day“, says Jess. For Gerald, the best thing was that there was no crowd of guests at their wedding, including those with whom he had never exchanged two stories in his life.
When the newlyweds decided to tell their parents that they were married, at first they didn’t believe them, but then everyone was happy to hear the good news, mostly because they saved themselves the effort of looking for an elegant outfit for the wedding of their children and worries about who will fund most of their party.
Through secret weddings, the newlyweds also save effort in searching for the perfect outfits, especially the brides, reports BTA. Thanks to the fashion of secret marriage ceremonies, ladies don’t have to shop around in search of the perfect wedding dress, or go to designer fittings for an extravagant outfit. In both cases, they acquire something expensive and often dysfunctional, which then ages in the closet, and in the case of a divorce is thrown away.
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