Mrs. Britney No More

Spears files official paperwork in Las Vegas to dissolve quickie weekend wedding

By Joal Ryan Jan 05, 2004 11:50 PMTags

Finally, Britney Spears and Zsa Zsa Gabor have something in common: short-lived--make that extremely short-lived--marriages.

In the spirit of Hungarian beauty queen Gabor (she of the one-day marriage in 1982 to Mexican lawyer Felipe De Alba), pop tart Spears ended her union to hometown friend Jason Allen Alexander on Monday, just two days after the fun couple tied the knot in Las Vegas.

Actually, Spears wanted out of the marriage--described by her camp as a "joke [taken] too far"--mere hours after the 5:30 a.m. Saturday ceremony at the Strip's Little White Wedding Chapel.

Per court documents posted on the Smoking Gun's Website, Spears signed papers requesting an annulment later that very same day.

The paperwork was filed with Nevada court officials on Monday morning. A judge signed off shortly thereafter, the office for Spears' Vegas-based attorney, David Chesnoff, confirmed.

In Spears' filing, the 22-year-old singer declared that she and Alexander, also 22, have no children, and aren't expecting any. She requested that neither she nor Alexander be awarded alimony or community property for the good, um, several hours each put in at the spousal office.

Spears said she deserved an annulment, which renders the marriage void and strikes it from the record (although not our collective pop-culture memory), because she "lacked understanding of her actions."

She and Alexander, her petition said, hastily exchanged vows before they settled matters such as "each others likes and dislikes, each others desires to have or not have children and each others desires as to state of residency." Presumably, they didn't get into the whole Justin Timberlake thing, either.

Although Alexander didn't submit any court paperwork of his own, he sounded in agreement with Spears' take on the "joke" marriage.

"We got back to the room [at the Palms casino, where Spears was staying] and...that's when all hell broke loose, and we realized what we did probably wasn't the right thing we should've done and wasn't the right way to go about it," Alexander, a Southeastern Louisiana University undergrad, not to be confused with the former Seinfeld star, told Access Hollywood. "We needed to fix the problem--the mistake we had made."

According to Alexander, who said he has known Spears "forever," dating back to the Louisiana preschool her mother owned and he attended, the "Oops" girl called him up on Tuesday, the day before New Year's Eve, and invited him to Sin City.

New Year's Eve in Vegas turned out to be a "really good night," Alexander told Access Hollywood. The wee hours of Saturday weren't so bad, either.

"We were sitting in the room, and it was just crazy, and we were looking out the windows and looking at the lights and the city...We were looking at each other, and we were like, 'Let's do something wild and crazy, and let's go get married just for the hell of it. Let's go,' " he said to the TV show.

The way Alexander described it, he and Spears wanted to enjoy a Vegas wedding without really getting married. Unfortunately, he said, they were told they couldn't walk down the aisle without a license. So, they got one.

An official at Las Vegas' Clark County Clerk Office, where marriage-license applications are processed around the clock during weekends (at $55 a pop), said Spears and Alexander obtained the paperwork in person. She did not know what time they were there.

Spears walked down the aisle at the Little White Wedding Chapel (home to nuptials for Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. and Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, among other celeb sets) and on the arm of a Palms limo driver and clad in a baseball cap and jeans.

The non-couple's quickie marriage, and even quicker annulment, came in the wake of a London tab report that Spears had to be carried out of the Palms' nightclub, Rain, after imbibing too much on New Year's Eve. Her camp labeled the account "ridiculous."

Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Norm Clarke wrote in his paper that he saw Spears at 11:15 p.m. that night and that the entertainer "showed no signs of being snockered."

According to Clarke, Spears also appeared to be in possession of her faculties on Saturday night, several hours after the wedding. She was spotted dining at the Palms with older brother Bryan, casino co-owner George Maloof (one of Spears' rumored post-Timberlake beaus) and her soon-to-be ex, he wrote.

With a marriage escapade under her belt, Spears joins the storied ranks of Gabor, Ethel Merman, Patty Duke and Michelle Phillips as an incredibly ill-fated celebrity bride.

Broadway belter Merman's blessed union to Oscar-winning Ernest Borgnine endured for 32 days in 1964; Duke's marital bliss with Michael Tell lasted all of 13 days in 1970; Phillips' attempt to tame Easy Rider Dennis Hopper made it eight days, also in 1970.

Makes Jennifer Lopez--two failed marriages, lasting a combined two years, give or take a couple of months--seem a patient bride by comparison, huh?