Britney Spears’ first husband, Jason Alexander, is slamming the claims in her new book, The Woman in Me, about their infamous Las Vegas wedding in 2004.
The duo — who had been friends since childhood — were married for only 55 hours after drunkenly (according to Spears) deciding to tie the knot.
“As a twentysomething will do after a few drinks, I wound up in bed with one of my old friends, a childhood friend who I’d known forever. The third night we were there together, he and I got s—tfaced,” Spears, now 41, wrote in her memoir — which was released on Tuesday, October 24 — about her time in Vegas with Alexander, 42. “I don’t even remember that night at all, but from what I’ve pieced together, he and I lounged around the hotel room and stayed up late watching movies — Mona Lisa Smile and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre — then had the brilliant idea of going to A Little White Chapel at 3:30 in the morning. When we got there, another couple was getting married, so we had to wait. Yes — we waited in line to get married.”
Spears continued: “People have asked me if I loved him. To be clear: he and I were not in love. I was just honestly very drunk —and probably, in a more general sense at that time in my life, very bored.”
Alexander, for his part, told TMZ in an interview published on Wednesday, October 25 — one day after Spears’ memoir hit shelves — that he and the pop star were absolutely in love and hadn’t been drinking when they wed.
That contradicts Alexander’s 2012 interview with ABC News where he claimed they’d had “party favors” that night. When asked if he was referring to drugs, Alexander replied, “Alcohol is a drug. Coffee is a drug. [A] cigarette is a drug. Yeah, we were doing drugs.”
Spears, meanwhile, believes her family overreacted when finding out about their nuptials — and forced her to annul the marriage just over two days later.
“The next day, my whole family flew out to Vegas. They showed up and stared at me with these eyes of such fury. I looked around. ‘What happened last night?’ I asked. ‘Did I kill someone?’” she wrote. “‘You got married!’ they said, as if that might be somehow worse.”
“They made way too big of a deal out of innocent fun. Everybody has a different perspective on it, but I didn’t take it that seriously. I thought a goof-around Vegas wedding was something people might do as a joke,” the Grammy winner continued. “Then my family came and acted like I’d started World War III. I cried the whole rest of the time I was in Las Vegas. ‘I’m guilty!’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten married.’”
Eighteen years after they exchanged vows — and annulled their marriage — Alexander made headlines again when he attempted to crash Spears’ wedding to Sam Asghari in June 2022. (Asghari, 29, filed for divorce from Spears just over one year later.)
“Britney Spears invited me here,” Alexander said via Instagram Live at the time, as he was on Spears’ property. “She’s my first wife. My only wife. I’m her first husband. I’m here to crash the wedding cause nobody [is] here but Sam. So where the f–k’s the family?”
Two months later, a judge found Alexander guilty of aggravated trespassing and battery in August, according to court documents viewed by Us Weekly at the time. (He was initially arrested earlier that year for allegedly stalking his ex-wife.) He was sentenced to 128 days in Ventura County Jail, and Spears and her security guard Richard Eubeler — who confronted Alexander at Spears’ residence — were granted a “no contact” protective order against him.
In addition to her marriages to Alexander and Asghari, Spears was married to Kevin Federline from 2004 to 2007. The exes share sons Sean Preston, 18, and Jayden, 17.
