Courtney Stodden almost reconsidered her marriage to Jared Safier on their wedding night.
“Year 1, down! 🥹🦋💍,” Stodden, 31, captioned a black and white photo from their nuptials via Instagram on Tuesday, December 2, in honor of the couple’s wedding anniversary. “Here’s the raw unfiltered truth: I almost ran away.”
The Couples Therapy alum explained, “On the night I got married, Jared and I were both emotional, overwhelmed, and far too drunk to be making decisions with clear hearts. A misunderstanding turned into a fight, outside voices added fuel, and everything spiraled faster than either of us meant it to.”
Stodden said that Safier, 42, left during the argument “because he truly believed space was the right choice.”
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“And so I spent our honeymoon night alone in the bridal suite, wrapped in silence that brought back every old wound from being married at 16,” Stodden continued. “The fear. The abandonment. The panic that history was repeating itself. It shook me to my core. I felt like dying.”
Stodden, who gained international attention after she wed then-51-year-old actor Doug Hutchison when she was 16 years old in 2011, added that she “didn’t run” from her marriage to Safier despite her fears.
“And I’m grateful we came back with honesty, and a willingness to rebuild. Because I love him. And I know he loves me too,” she wrote. “This hasn’t been easy for either of us. We walked into marriage carrying childhood scars, complicated family dynamics, and expectations neither of us knew how to hold. We have been working on rebuilding; rebuilding safety, rebuilding connection … all while learning who we are as husband and wife.”
Stodden noted that she and Safier are “learning to communicate, love better and choose each other even when it hurts.”
“Maybe love isn’t perfect, but honest. Maybe love isn’t the fairytale. Maybe it’s two flawed people fighting to be seen, even after the hardest beginning,” she concluded. “Here’s to surviving year one. Here’s to staying when it would’ve been easier to run. And here’s to walking into year two with hopefully more softness, more grace, and a love that we both deserve 🥹.”
NewsPlop exclusively confirmed that Stodden and Safier tied the knot in a “last-minute wedding” on December 3, 2024. The pair had just 20 guests in attendance as they exchanged vows at Casa de Monte Vista in Palm Springs, California.
“We planned on getting married, and we didn’t have a date. We just kind of looked at each other, and we’re the same kind of crazy. We just looked at each other and we’re just like, ‘This is the perfect time to do it,’” Stodden told Us, revealing that the wedding planning began three weeks prior when she and Safier realized both their families would be in town for Thanksgiving.
“I am feeling excited. I feel like I am on a journey of where I’m supposed to be,” Stodden continued. “Everything that has happened up to this point has led me here.”
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Prior to her marriage to Safier, Stodden was married to Hutchison, 65, until 2018, when she filed for divorce from the Green Mile actor. Their split was finalized in 2020.
“I was scared to live without a man who convinced me that I couldn’t live without him nor would I ever find love again,” Stodden exclusively told Us after the divorce, claiming that Hutchison emotionally abused her throughout their relationship.
Hutchison’s rep, Charles Lago, responded to Stodden’s claims in an exclusive statement to Us at the time, saying that Hutchison planned to share his side in his 2020 memoir, In Flushing Hollywood: Fake News, Fake Boobs.
“Doug’s first half of his book is about the actors he worked with, the second half is about meeting Courtney,” Lago said. “He goes on to say she came up with schemes after Doug’s money ran out. Courtney never had the miscarriage, it was all fake, none of the separations of their marriage were true, they were all conducted by Courtney. He went into the relationship with some money, then he gave her hundreds of thousands of dollars on plastic surgery. When it ran out Courtney started running these scams. This book is him cleaning his soul and about redemption. Courtney recently found out about the book and wasn’t angry, but she was a little surprised.”
Stodden then issued a response to the statement.
“The fact is I was 16 and I didn’t know any better when I married him. When we married, he only had $50k to his name and that went to paying off his debts,” she told Us. “I became the primary breadwinner and had to shoulder that responsibility because he could not or refused work. I was just a teenager who felt responsible for this man who is older than my father.”