Some Hollywood love stories withstand the test of time. Others barely survive the honeymoon. PEOPLE’s roundup revisits seven high-profile marriages that lasted less than a year — from a 55-hour Las Vegas wedding to an eight-month union a decade in the making — and what the stars themselves have said about them since.
Britney Spears and Jason Alexander: 55 Hours
Spears’ first marriage was also her shortest. In January 2004 she married fellow Kentwood, Louisiana native and childhood friend Jason Alexander at Las Vegas’s Little White Wedding Chapel, wearing a black cropped shirt, a baseball cap and jeans. Just 55 hours later she filed for an annulment, with a source telling PEOPLE at the time the wedding was “a joke that went too far.” In her 2023 memoir The Woman in Me, she wrote: “People have asked me if I loved him. To be clear: he and I were not in love. I was just honestly very drunk — and probably, in a more general sense at that time in my life, very bored.”
(Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0))Carmen Electra and Dennis Rodman: 9 Days
Electra and Rodman met, began dating and wed in 1998, marrying Nov. 14, 1998, at Little Chapel of the Flowers in Las Vegas. The NBA star filed for an annulment just nine days later. “Carmen and Dennis spoke several days ago and mutually agreed (to end the marriage),” a spokeswoman for Electra said at the time. They later reconciled, but divorced in the spring of 1999. A decade after their split, the model told PEOPLE: “My advice to anyone is to not get married in Vegas.”
Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries: 72 Days
Kardashian and Humphries tied the knot in a lavish ceremony on Aug. 20, 2011, after dating for less than a year. Three weeks after the four-hour special Kim’s Fairytale Wedding aired on E!, and only 72 days into the marriage, Kardashian filed for divorce on Oct. 31, 2011. “I had hoped this marriage was forever, but sometimes things don’t work out as planned,” she said in a statement. “We remain friends and wish each other the best.” The settlement came in April 2013 and the divorce was finalized two months later. She later reflected on the reunion special of Keeping Up with the Kardashians in 2021 that she had felt “pressure” before the televised nuptials and handled the breakup “the wrong way”: “I fully broke up with him in the worst way, and I couldn’t, I just didn’t know how to deal. I learned so much from it.”
(Kirk Weaver / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0))Lisa Marie Presley and Nicolas Cage: 107 Days
Presley and Cage’s on-and-off relationship began at a party in 2000, and they tied the knot Aug. 10, 2002, in Hawaii. The National Treasure star filed for divorce on Nov. 25, 2002 — 107 days after the wedding — though it was not finalized until May 2004. After Presley’s death on Jan. 12, 2023, Cage said in a statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter: “Lisa had the greatest laugh of anyone I ever met. She lit up every room, and I am heartbroken.”
Sophia Bush and Chad Michael Murray: 5 Months
The One Tree Hill costars began dating in 2003 and married in an oceanfront ceremony in April 2005 — then separated after just five months, with their divorce final in December 2006. In 2024 Murray told The Cut he “was a baby”: “I didn’t know up, down, left, right. You move out there and you go, ‘Well, what am I supposed to do now? Get married? That’s exciting!'” Bush, in an October 2026 episode of Call Her Daddy, was equally gentle: “We were kids; we’re all adults; we’re all parents. No harm, no foul. Wish you well.” She had earlier told Andy Cohen the pair were “two stupid kids who had no business being in a relationship in the first place.”
(David French / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0))Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth: 8 Months
Cyrus and Hemsworth’s brief marriage was over a decade in the making. They met in 2009 filming The Last Song, dated on and off in an on-and-off relationship, engaged in 2012, split, reunited in 2016 and finally married in December 2018. By early August 2019 a rep confirmed they had separated, citing irreconcilable differences in his filing: “Ever-evolving, changing as partners and individuals, they have decided this is what’s best while they both focus on themselves and careers.” Their divorce was finalized Jan. 28, 2020.
Elisabeth Moss and Fred Armisen: 8 Months
Moss and Armisen met in October 2008 on the Saturday Night Live set and married Oct. 25, 2009, at The Foundry in Long Island City. She filed for divorce in September 2010, listing June 26 as the separation date. “One of the greatest things I heard someone say about him is, ‘He’s so great at doing impersonations. But the greatest impersonation he does is that of a normal person,'” she told Page Six in 2012. Armisen, on WTF with Marc Maron in 2015, admitted: “I have a problem with intimacy, where all of a sudden, there’s a real person there.”
Seven Weddings, Seven Lessons
Together, the seven unions span 55 hours to eight months, two Las Vegas chapels, one televised fairytale, an oceanfront ceremony, a Hawaiian wedding and a foundry in Long Island City. What unites them is not failure but speed — and, in hindsight, a surprising amount of grace. The exes who have spoken since have mostly blamed youth, timing and pressure rather than each other: a drunk joke in Vegas, a baby who did not know up from down, kids who had no business marrying. The marriages were brief. The quotes, decades later, are forever.