MR & MRS AT LAST!

Twenty years after calling off wedding No 1 Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck finally said I do with no fanfare, no fans and no fuss

- MAXINE PETERS

‘WE DID it. Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out love is patient. Twenty years patient.”

These are the words Jennifer Lopez chose to tell the world she and Ben Affleck had tied the knot – and it was the latest chapter in a love story that almost seems too good to be true.

A few months ago, when it became clear Bennifer 2.0 were back together again for real, fans barely dared to hope it could have a happy ending. After all, this is Hollywood – the home of heartbreak. Could Jen and Ben really go the distance this time?

The answer, it seems, is yes. Two decades after they called off their wedding at the 11th hour, fleeing the altar amid a stifling blaze of public attention and paparazzi, they got hitched.

And this time, it was on their terms: a midnight ceremony with zero hoo-ha, no guest list featuring the who’s who of Tinseltown, nothing getting close to over-the-top décor or flowers, no retinue of bridesmaids and groomsmen.

In fact, there weren’t even new outfits – just a Las Vegas chapel, their kids in attendance and an official taking them through vows they wrote themselves.

“It was exactly what we wanted,” Jen (53) says in her On the JLo newsletter.

There was no special treatment either: the couple stood in line waiting their turn at A Little White Wedding Chapel.

“Behind us two men held hands and held each other,” she says. “In front of us, a young couple who made the three-hour drive from Victorville [California] on their daughter’s second birthday.