Millie Bobby Brown and Jake Bongiovi are officially married.
Last weekend, the 20-year-old Stranger Things star and the model, 22, tied the knot in a secret wedding ceremony with their “closest” friends and family in attendance, including the model’s famous father Jon Bon Jovi of ‘80s rock band Bon Jovi, according to People. A source told the outlet: “It was a very low-key, romantic affair with their closest family with them as they said their vows.”
According to the outlet, the secret ceremony won’t be the first wedding the couple plans to host this year, with a bigger affair scheduled later in the year.
In April 2023, the Stranger Things star, then 19, announced her engagement to Bongiovi with a sweet black and white photo on Instagram, captioned with lyrics from Taylor Swift’s “Lover”: “I’ve loved you three summers now, honey, I want ‘em all,” she wrote. Two months later, the couple had a private engagement party, where they posed for pictures in front of heart-shaped white balloons and a light-up sign that read: “Mr & Mrs Bongiovi.”
Their engagement came nearly two years after the pair confirmed their relationship when they shared a selfie in June 2021. In an interview with The Sunday Times, Brown gave fans a look into the wedding planning process and revealed that the budding musician proposed to her with a ring her mother Kelly gave him.
“I’ve always loved that ring, it’s always stuck out to me, so she gave it to Jake,” she told the outlet. “They were in cahoots about the whole proposal. I love that I can always keep a piece of my mum with me.”
From the moment they met, Brown said it felt like she had finally met her person. She recalled: “I ran to my mum and said: ‘I really, really like him!’ After we met we knew we never wanted to leave each other’s side. You can’t pinpoint why, it’s just the feeling of knowing that that’s the person you want to spend the rest of your time with.
“I think so much of life is overthinking. The one thing that made clear sense to me was him. So I didn’t really have to do much thinking.”
In an interview with Glamour, the Enola Holmes actor credited the up-and-coming musician with helping her “embrace” all the parts of herself that she didn’t like or accept. She explained to the outlet: “When I met Jake, I just felt I could be loud. He embraced that and encouraged that. And I fell in love with myself while being with him.”
As she had been reeling from the “unhealthy situation,” meeting Bongiovi completely changed how she viewed relationships. Before Bongiovi, the actor was afraid to take up space in relationships and be herself, noting: “I think I was so afraid to be a strong woman in a relationship.”
Brown described the immediate intensity of the connection she felt with Bongiovi as “bizarre” and much different than anything she had ever experienced before.
“I wanted to be the woman that my mom is to me and I wanted to be the woman that my grandmother was to me,” she continued. “So that was never my, like, intention, to be a wife. But after meeting Jake and seeing: ‘Oh, I don’t have to be this stereotypical wife for him.’ He doesn’t want me to be that either. He wants me to go and do my thing and live my life, and he will hold my hand in the process of that. I was like: ‘Oh, I do want this.’”