That thrill when a new On The JLo arrives in my inbox … 

It hits me in my gossip soul. How can you be into celebrity gossip and not feel the same? Jennifer Lopez’s newsletter reliably delivers authenticated gossip about one of the most famous women in our world, directly from one of the most famous women in the world, straight into our accounts. It’s still radical to me that she’s doing this. And that Ben Affleck, also one of the most famous people in the world, is participating by extension. 

 

As expected, in the latest issue of On The JLo, we’re getting more from the Bennifer wedding, in the form of a romance novel. I have a PhD in reading romance novels and I’m telling you, this is written like a romance novel! Is JLo working on a romance novel?! (Or is her ghostwriter working on a romance novel?)

“At six forty-five, Saturday, August twentieth, the sun broke free and cast its rays like little diamonds dancing across the river behind the makeshift altar in our backyard. The sky was clear blue, and distant clouds of pure white held fast in the sky. As the sun set behind the live oaks draped in Spanish moss, a warm breeze swept over the lawn where our closest family and friends sat and, at long-last, I started my walk down the stairs that would become the aisle that would lead me toward the rest of my life. Ahhhhh...it was actually happening...”

It’s a romance novel that comes with exclusive photos and this, of course, is what most people are talking about. There are more shots of her in her three wedding day looks. 

 

And new pictures of her in her looks from the rehearsal dinner (a gold dress) and the Sunday brunch. I love this shot:

Also photos of the table settings and other wedding design features. 

But this tweet cracked me up: 

 

I mean…yeah. It IS a “lil basic”. But On The JLo is also a lil basic. We’ve talked about this already – how it’s a factory settings newsletter, from the layout to the font. And also the content. On The JLo often reads like a journal – by intention. Remember, the promise here is that anyone who subscribes is being brought into her “inner circle”. Right now, until she starts blatantly only selling us sh-t, she’s keeping the inner circle basic AF.

Which brings us back to the romance writing, because it’s the text, more than the photos, that does it for me in the gossip sweetspot. There is so much gossip insight in the text. Right from the opening line:

“This is heaven. Right here. We’re in it now.”

Corny, no doubt. So corny. But also… this is what Ben said during his wedding speech. He didn’t write it for the wedding though, he wrote it for one of his movies, Live By Night. So he quoted himself at their wedding. And then she quotes him quoting himself at their wedding On The JLo and if you don’t understand why I’m screaming right now, I can’t help you! 

This is vanity, for sure, but it’s also love and gossip. Because writing has always been the hook for JLo when it comes to Ben. Remember, when they first got back together last year, right after she broke off her previous engagement, it was reported that Ben had been emailing her for weeks? He was writing her love letters - that was how he wooed her, with his words. 

Which totally tracks. Because JLo is an unapologetic romantic – this is what makes her corny, you can’t lean into romanticism without also eating a lot of corn, which why I buy all of it: JLo has never not loved love, nobody loves love more than she does, like pure romance novel love. 

But one of the problems in their past is that Ben wasn’t ready to get there with her… despite being kind of the same! Let’s stop pretending that she’s force-feeding him all the corn. There is no forcing here. He’s a willing corn co-producer – you can’t be a dude who writes letters full of “love and longing” and not have corn in your DNA. 

These two are all in TOGETHER in the corn field. And together they are mythologising their love story. Nobody is more amazed at the Bennifer love story than Bennifer themselves. As JLo shared in this newsletter, she surprised him by inviting Marc Cohn to sing at the wedding because 20 years ago, in the OG Bennifer days, they had talked about having Cohn’s “True Companion” as their wedding song.

“Later Ben 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. 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. I would have had many of the same thoughts probably 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. 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.”

 

Bennifer by Bennifer is an epic sweeping romance spanning 20 years and multiple continents, riding the highs of success and the lows of addiction, unextinguishable despite detours and disappointments, a prophecy waiting patiently for its time to come true.