Britney & Kevin got married on September 18, 2004, after a 2-month engagement in Los Angeles, California.
Background[]
Credit to E! News for their of this event. Just weeks after she spent 55 hours married to hometown pal Jason Alexander, whom she swapped vows with in Vegas in January 2004, Spears met Federline, a former backup dancer for Justin Timberlake who sported cornrows and was known among his colleagues as "Meat Pole." He was already dad to daughter Kori with Jackson, and the Moesha actress was pregnant with their second child.
Not wanting to stick it to Timberlake, Spears invited Federline to join her Onyx Hotel Tour, which kicked off that March. Midway through the month, however, the "Oops!...I Did It Again" artist hurt her knee onstage, which forced her to cancel two shows. She pulled it together and was selling out arenas and stadiums all over Europe, but the then-22-year-old re-injured the knee while shooting a video in June, enough to require arthroscopic surgery and force her to cancel the rest of the tour.
Spears was ordered to rest for four months, during which she took the opportunity to propose to Federline. He jokingly declined but returned the favor moments later, and she said yes. By then they had matching dice tattoos and what turned out to be a trippy reality show's worth of home movie footage of each other.
On Sept. 16, 2004, Spears went brunette, technically her natural state. On Sept. 17, 2004, a Friday, she had a bachelorette spa day with girlfriends while Federline and some buddies played golf and had dinner.
And then, about a month before people thought they were going to be tying the knot at the posh Bacara Resort in Santa Barbara, Calif., the couple married on Sept. 18, 2004, at what their 27 guests thought was just supposed to be an engagement party at a Studio City home. The bride wore Monique Lhuillier. After the ceremony, the bridesmaids donned pink Juicy Couture track suits embroidered with "The Maids" on the back (gifted to them upon arrival, as even the wedding party, family members included, was in the dark) and the groomsmen were given white track suits emblazoned with "Pimps," and they all went out dancing.
People bought the wedding pics for a reported $1 million.
The newlyweds felt "awesome," Spears told the magazine two days later in a suite at the Hotel Bel-Air, where she and her hubby were staycationing before their honeymoon. "Elated."
Explaining why they scrapped the original plan, she explained, "I just thought it would be too much if we had done it when we were supposed to. It became this huge thing and I was like, 'What are we waiting for? We know this is the real thing, why not just do it now?' That's why I wanted to sneak and do it our little way."[1]
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