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FIFTEEN SECONDS OF FAME?
YES, I WAS THE MINISTER
AT BRITNEY SPEARS'
INFAMOUS FIRST
WEDDING CEREMONY!

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PEOPLE COVER

US MAGAZINE

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What Was She Thinking?

In the wee hours of Jan. 3, 2004, after watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in their $10,000-a-night suite at the Palms Casino Hotel, Britney Spears and her childhood pal Jason Allen Alexander were itching for a little excitement. They got it. Around 3:30 a.m., after a brief visit to the ghostbar, a swanky nightspot on the 55th floor, they asked the bar bouncers for a limousine. In the lobby, a bellman who doubles as a driver escorted the pair to the hotel's lime-green courtesy limo and asked them where they wanted to go. "Take us to a chapel," Spears answered.
As the limo, pop music filling its interior, cruised along Las Vegas's celebrated Strip, Spears and Alexander made out. The first two chapels they came upon were closed, but Spears told the driver to keep going. Finally they came upon A Little White Wedding Chapel, where lights were on and the door was open. Inside, says a witness to the proceedings, the pair were told they needed a license to marry. Hopping back in the green limo, the soon-to-be-weds continued kissing and hugging until the car pulled up to the Clark County Marriage License Bureau. As the two 22-year-olds waited to plunk down $55 in cash for a license, Spears "really didn't say anything," says Linda Wells, one of three people working the graveyard shift that night. "She was just kind of quiet."

If the magnitude — or stupidity — of what she was about to do was beginning to sink in, the pop world's most unpredictable princess didn't let that stop the fun. At 5 a.m. she and Alexander returned to the chapel, where they were ushered into the Michael Jordan room, a 20-by-50-ft. sanctuary with white benches, each dotted with a burgundy velvet cushion, and lined with white candles and flowers. (The basketball star wed there in 1989.) As Spears whipped out a credit card to pay for the $200 wedding, which included photos, a bouquet of pink roses and a video, the $100 million performer exclaimed about how expensive the package was.

"Too bad no one's here to give you away," the driver said. With a look of surprise, Spears said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah," then asked if he'd perform the task. The pastor hit a remote, and the strains of "The Wedding March" filled the room. Arm-in-arm with the driver, Spears glided down the aisle past 10 empty pews in a belly-baring black shirt, torn jeans and sneakers, her hair tucked carelessly beneath a baseball cap. In a nod to tradition, she sported a white garter, acquired at the chapel, that she'd pulled over her left pant leg.

Seven minutes later, after minister Ian Schonken (sic) proclaimed Spears and Alexander husband and wife, the newlyweds locked in a long and passionate kiss, and the limo driver said, "Congratulations!" As the couple exited, "they were smiling and laughing," says another witness. "But it didn't seem like, Oh, this is the love of her life."
Perhaps because it wasn't. Just 11 hours later, after the pair called their respective families and, as Alexander put it, "all hell broke loose," the newlyweds appealed for an annulment. Citing a failure to "know each other's likes and dislikes, each other's desires to have or not have children, and each other's desires as to state of residency," the formal request concluded, "they are so incompatible that there was a want of understanding of each other's actions in entering into this marriage." Two days later it was all over but the memories.

One question remains, however: What were they thinking? Was this evidence of a Spears meltdown? A misguided attempt to convince the world she's no longer a teeny-bopper princess? An impetuous gesture springing from deep feelings that neither have owned up to? Or was it all just a p.r. gimmick? "This is by no means a publicity stunt," says Lizzie Grubman, Spears's former rep. "What good could come out of this?"

People close to Spears and Alexander vigorously deny that the two wacky kids from Kentwood, La., were in an alcoholic haze when they exchanged vows. "They weren't drunk," says Doreen Seal, 45, Alexander's mother. "It's just a moment that got out of control, and there was no one there to stop them. They made a mistake and then they fixed it." Lance Bass, who, unlike his 'N Sync bandmate and Spears's ex Justin Timberlake, remains close to Britney, spent an hour with the pop diva in her suite soon after Alexander headed back to Kentwood late the afternoon of his wedding day. "Young people do stupid things every day," says Bass. "She was of sound mind. It's just a moment where a joke went too far."

Just ask Britney's mom, Lynne, 48, who helps manage Spears's career. Says Seal: "Lynne hit the roof." Within hours of Britney's phone call to report she'd gotten hitched, Lynne had flown from Kentwood to join her daughter in the Palms' N9ne Steakhouse, where an annulment powwow was already under way involving the newlyweds, Spears's brother Bryan, 26, her manager Larry Rudolph, Palms owner and longtime friend George Maloof Jr. and the pop star's newly hired attorney David Z. Chesnoff. "There were not many happy campers," says an eyewitness.
Adults more removed from the soap opera — but connected to Spears's professional life — have a harsher take on Britney's high jinks. "She doesn't have good advisers," says a member of her management team. "The mother just wasn't prepared for (stardom). She doesn't have any control over Britney. In some ways, Britney was the parent." Another source, who formerly worked with Spears, echoes that sentiment in spades, saying that her advisers are amateurs, that she rarely listens anyway and that the whole lot "think they know the game, but they don't."

For now the trouble seems to be contained. In what Las Vegas attorneys term a remarkably fast turnaround, Spears and Alexander were granted a formal annulment Jan. 5, putting her fortune off-limits from any claims by Alexander. (However, Jason, a junior at Southeastern Louisiana University, reportedly has hired a publicist to handle media inquiries.)

But in her passage from teenybop phenom to tarty pop diva, Spears has often seemed wildly out of control, particularly since her March 2002 public split with Timberlake (who is now seriously involved with actress Cameron Diaz), followed two months later by her parents' divorce. The night she and Alexander landed in Las Vegas, after having spent much of the Christmas holiday together in Kentwood, reports circulated that she was drunk in the Palms' ghostbar nightclub. "She was just tired from a long trip," Palms owner Maloof responded. The incident echoed a series of such reports over the last year of Spears allegedly partying heavily in night spots in both the U.S. and Europe

Source: People Magazine

BTW, the couple was not drunk; otherwise I would not have married them! –Iann

Disclaimer:

The information presented above is a matter of public record. Whatever would be considered confidential or private by either the couple or The Little White Wedding Chapel, for which I worked at the time, will remain confidential because a confidentiality agreement which was in place at the time and which remains in effect.

Posted via email from MAXIMUM LIFE