Ben 'n' Jen back together?
Couple sighted at small-town Georgia courthouse
Tuesday, September 23, 2003 Posted: 11:59 AM EDT (1559 GMT)
(CNN) -- Are Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez really splitsville -- or are they playing the news media like a Stradivarius?
According to reports in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Associated Press, the celebrity couple -- known as "Bennifer" (or, to some wags, "Affpez") -- was spotted Monday at the Liberty County Courthouse in the southeast Georgia town of Hinesville, about 30 miles from the coastal city of Savannah.
The sighting was just days after word arose that the duo's Southern California wedding, allegedly scheduled for the weekend of September 12, had been canceled and that the two had gone their separate ways.
Whether Lopez and Affleck were applying for a marriage or a gun license or simply completing some other paperwork was unknown despite rumors about the first two possibilities.
"There was some business conducted, but I am not at liberty to say what it was," Gretta Logan, senior deputy clerk of the Liberty County Probate Court, told the Journal-Constitution with an inadvertent pun. "What they were doing was their business."
The Liberty County sheriff said Affleck stopped by to ask about a gun permit, according to the AP, but court officials denied that report to the Journal-Constitution.
What was verified was that Affleck and Lopez did come to the courthouse (allegedly with Affleck's brother Casey), attracting paparazzi and cheerfully signing autographs.
Brooke Moran, a deputy registrar at the courthouse, told the Journal-Constitution that the pair "looked totally together, smiling and happy."
A Savannah radio station reported that the couple also had been sighted at a local shopping mall over the weekend. The couple recently purchased a multimillion-dollar estate on Georgia's Hampton Island.
So, is the love match back on? Only the couple -- and maybe their friends and relatives -- know. But if it is, and if it was never off, score one for the celebs for both maintaining a media frenzy and holding their relationship together.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Movi...pez/index.html