Hailey Bieber (née Baldwin) and Justin Bieber wanted to wait for the perfect moment to celebrate their love with family and friends — even if it meant having a wedding one year after their courthouse ceremony.
“When we first got married, we were just figuring out our life together. I felt like putting a wedding in the middle of all of that would be really hectic and stressful,” the model, 23, said in her March 2020 Elle cover story, published on Wednesday, February 5.
The couple also decided to hold off on their second walk down the aisle because Justin, 25, was privately battling an unknown health issue. He later found out that he has Lyme disease.
“He was dealing with a bunch of medical stuff. We didn’t have a diagnosis,” Hailey recalled to the magazine. “And it was hard because everybody from the outside was being super mean and judgmental, saying he looked like he was on drugs, saying how unhealthy he looked, when in truth, he was not healthy and we didn’t know why.”
After months of “being a new wife trying to help him figure out what was wrong and what was going on,” Hailey and Justin finally received his diagnosis.
“Now he’s perfectly healthy,” she said. “But going through that and then trying to be like, ‘So where does our wedding fit into this?’ didn’t feel like the vibe at all.”
The Biebers secretly married at a New York City courthouse in September 2018. The following September, they invited approximately 100 loved ones to South Carolina for a more formal ceremony and reception.
The “Yummy” singer and the Drop the Mic cohost first dated from 2015 to 2016. They started talking again in June 2018 after attending the same church conference in Miami.
“It was the first time we’d seen each other in a while,” Hailey recounted to Elle. “I remember we were hanging out and I was like, ‘Listen, I’m really, really happy for us to be friends again. I want us to always be cool and be friends.’ He was like, ‘Yeah, here’s the thing: We’re not going to be friends.’ And I was like, ‘Oh. Is that so?’ I think we were both a little unsure about what was going on in the very beginning. It was familiar territory, but when a lot of time goes by, it’s like getting to know a new person.”
A month later, Justin proposed to Hailey during a trip to the Bahamas. The rest, as they say, was history.
“He was somebody I’d always cared about so deeply and loved very deeply. Obviously, it took work and getting past things between the two of us, but it was all very worth it,” she gushed to the publication. “He’s an incredible, amazing man and such a good partner to go through life with. There is no one else I would have ever wanted to spend my life with except him. So, I’m lucky.”
