Voices: Britney Spears’ wedding experience is every bride’s worst nightmare

Imagine yourself as Britney Spears, for a moment. Indulge me.

Picture the scene: you’re about to get married to the person you love. It’s your third time lucky – your first marriage to a childhood friend, some 18 years ago, lasted only 55 hours (an arguable flash in the pan romance).

Your second marriage, which lasted two years, resulted in two children – now 14 and 15. Not something you’re likely to forget, thanks to the legacy of love of becoming a mother. Yet still not your “happy ever after”. Not really.

And then you meet husband number three, Sam Asghari. Life is different, now: you’re 40 and free from the stifling bonds of control and conservatorship after 13 years – thanks to a court ruling, you have full say over your life for the first time since 2008. You can do what you like, date who you like, even post a full-frontal nude selfie on Instagram if you like. You get engaged. You are happy. More pertinently: you are free.

All is set, then, for your big day – the big day, the one you likely hope might end the pattern of painful break-ups and broken promises. Despite family whispers about your behaviour and concerns from your fans for your wellbeing; against the backdrop of a joyful engagement and a private wedding guest list, you get married.

But then your (first) ex-husband turns up.

Imagine the horror, please – for it is, truly, every bride’s worst nightmare. The one person you don’t want at your wedding, the one who has the potential to bring up a surge of unwanted emotion and memories? Your ex. In some circumstances, for those who have remained friendly with their exes, it might be fine. It might even seem weird if they weren’t there, especially if you share kids. Sure. But despite being childhood pals, Jason Alexander‘s decision to crash Britney’s wedding couldn’t have been more misplaced.

TMZ reported that Alexander, who she married for an incredibly brief period of time in 2004, was streaming the incident on Instagram as he arrived at the wedding in LA. They said he approached event security while live-streaming and told them that Britney had invited him. He then reportedly said he was going to crash the wedding before a “physical struggle” took place.

“She’s my first wife, my only wife,” he is said to have said. “I’m her first husband, I’m here to crash the wedding.”

It was also reported that Alexander somehow made it inside his ex-wife’s home where he continued to stream the event from his phone, before eventually being restrained.

He has now been charged with four misdemeanours which include two counts of misdemeanour battery, one count of misdemeanour vandalism and one count of misdemeanour trespassing, officials said. It also follows his recent arrest in Franklin, Tennessee for violating an order of protection and aggravated stalking.

Britney’s experience is extreme, but I think we can all appreciate (and share the simple horror) of the idea that someone from our past might show up like a spectre at our wedding to someone else.

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Just have a think about some of your exes – for me, it would be the equivalent of having the boy who dumped me at Reading Festival in 2001 (and yes, I had to try and find a tent to share with someone else) turning up and shouting about me being “the one who got away”, even though we dated for just three months more than 20 years ago.

It would be the stomach-churning nausea of my high school boyfriend – the one I dumped because I was going to Tenerife with my friends, and a 10-day holiday felt far too long to have a boyfriend back home waiting (and yes, I still feel ashamed) – tumbling through the door as I’m on my way down the aisle to ask me if I want to watch the rest of Forrest Gump, which we started but never finished.

It would be as if “Punk Boy” – who had dreadlocks and worked in the local pub in the town where I was a student, whose name I can’t actually remember, but who I dated for the briefest spell in my late teens – crashed in halfway through the speeches on his BMX, asking why I hadn’t added him on Myspace.

Thinking about your exes can be bad enough. Now imagine them gatecrashing your wedding?