Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck wrapped up their three-day wedding celebration on Sunday (August 21) with family and friends.
While the extravaganza included a bonfire, rehearsal dinner, and barbecue, many people online focused on the controversial venue where the couple held the festivities. The big bash took place on the grounds of Affleck’s mansion in Riceboro, Georgia, about 40 miles from Savannah. The property includes a 6,000-square-foot home known as “the Big House.”
The “imitation” plantation was built in 2000 and designed to resemble a plantation in the Antebellum south. Affleck put it on the market in 2018 for $8.9 million, three years after he was a featured guest on the PBS series Finding Your Roots hosted by Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. During the show, Gates Jr. revealed to Affleck that one of his ancestors was a slave owner.
Before Affleck’s episode aired, the actor allegedly asked PBS not to include the information about his slave-owning family member. This was discovered when leaked emails were released after Sony Pictures Entertainment files were hacked around that time.
After lowering his asking price for the property to $7.6 million in 2019, Affleck took it off the market. Leslie Harris, professor of history at Northwestern University and co-editor of Slavery and Freedom in Savannah, said “it’s clear [Affleck] didn’t learn his lesson.”
“We’re back at the same place with him,” Harris told Page Six. “People still build houses that are plantation style. It’s a sign of wealth. It’s surprising that Affleck would choose this place for his wedding when many (historic) plantations have stopped even having weddings.”
Others online reacted to the fact that Lopez and Affleck held their wedding at a plantation house. “I want nothing but happiness for Jen and Ben but deeply disappointed by their choice of the venue ‘plantation house,’” one Twitter user posted. “It seems to me they do not care about the horror and cruelty it symbolizes.”
Here are few other opinions about Lopez and Affleck’s choice in wedding venues.