Jennifer Garner Says She Basically Threw Herself A Wedding For Her 50th Birthday
“I was so shocked that I was doing it,” she confessed.
Back in April, Jennifer Garner threw herself a 50th birthday bash for the ages. The party, which focused more on philanthropy than Garner herself, celebrated half a decade of the actress being alive alongside some of her closest friends and family.
The mom of three opened up to Town & Country about how the party was basically just a giant wedding with no groom.
“I basically had a wedding for myself,” Garner told the magazine, adding that she was “shocked that [she was the one] doing it.”
She mentioned that one of her favorite parts of the night was when she and her guests danced to "Rocky Top" by the Osborne Brothers. She also "put everyone to work" for charity.
As a birthday wish, Garner asked her party guests to fill 5,000 backpacks each with enough food to feed a family of four, in support of the Blessings in a Backpack program. That is a lot of backpacks!
Before the day of her 50th birthday party, she also received the gift of a lifetime when her childhood idol, Donny Osmond, surprised her at a restaurant. What she thought was just a special video message turned into a full-fledged meet and greet for the Alias actress.
“He took an hour and a half of his day to sit with me, sing my favorites, and to give me a master class on how to be a class act,” Garner shared on Instagram. “Thank you, Donny. 💜 Hi, @marieosmond. ☺️ I hope to meet you someday, Debbie. ♥️.”
The charitable birthday/wedding-in-disguise was just a few months before her ex-husband Ben Affleck married on-and-off girlfriend Jennifer Lopez in a surprise Las Vegas chapel wedding that was later followed by a ceremony at his Georgia estate.
Though Garner has not mentioned how she’s feeling about her ex-husband’s new marriage, she seems to be coparenting just fine with the Good Will Hunting actor. That just might be because Garner deems herself a nice person. She told Town & Country, “I have no reason not to be nice. My life is lovely.”
Though Garner has continually given off “nice girl” vibes, she wanted to clarify that when she wants to feel heard, she is not afraid to speak up.
“I'm not always just nice. I can also be salty, and I can be taciturn, or I can be really serious about what I want to get done,” she added. “It's not that I feel I'm underestimated in that way—I'm not afraid to stand up for myself and say, 'Just so you know, this isn't going to fly with me.' When that happens, I don't want you to be shocked that I'm a real person.”
