Spears and her now former husband, 22-year-old Jason Allen Alexander, apparently decided to get married on Friday night as they partied at the Palms Casino Hotel�s Ghostbar. After securing a license, Spears decked out in jeans and baseball cap was walked down the isle by a hotel bellman. 

According to the online edition of People Magazine, which broke the story, the marriage was simply a joke gone too far. The magazine was told by a reported close friend of Spears, "I don't know what's going through her mind."

Staff members at the Las Vegas Marriage Bureau, which granted the couple their marriage license, have told the press that the couple appeared sober and also very serious. 

�They were deadly serious. They weren�t laughing and joking like you would expect if the whole thing was a prank,� said Linda Wells who issued the license.   �Britney was wearing jeans, a hooded jumper and one of these trendy Von Dutch hats. I don�t think she said a word the whole time.� 

"I didn�t recognize her companion. He was wearing a white shirt and was very polite. They filled in the license, I authorized it and they were gone within 15 minutes." 

Another employee of the bureau, Joyce Singer, said that Britney appeared normal during the process. "She was sober - we are not allowed by law to give a license to anyone who is under the influence."

Update: According to the Independent.co.uk, the wedding set off Britney�s mother Lynne Spears, who flew into Las Vagas from Louisiana to give her daughter a piece of her mind after being told of the marriage.

Britney had an attorney file a petition for annulment early Monday morning when the courts opened. "Plaintiff Spears lacked understanding of her actions to the extent that she was incapable of agreeing to the marriage," the annulment petition said.

Clark County Family Court Judge Lisa M. Brown apparently agreed and signed the order of annulment at 12:24 p.m. local time. 

"There is no marriage now," Spears� attorney David Chesnoff told The Associated Press. "Jason agreed to this completely. They've made a wise decision. I know they care about each other. They are friends."

The petition claimed in part that the life long friends, "Before entering into the marriage the plaintiff and defendant did not know each other's likes and dislikes, each other's desires to have or not have children, and each other's desires as to state of residency. Upon learning of each other's desires, they are so incompatible that there was a want of understanding of each other's actions in entering into this marriage."

Nevada law specifies that a marriage must meet one of the following six criteria in order to qualify for annulment: unsound mind, physical incapacity, force, fraud, prior existing marriage or underage participants. 

Was this really a joke gone bad? Did a wedding really take place? Did Spears and Alexander consummate the marriage? Do we really care? Or was this a publicity stunt or hoax and was the joke really on the press?  We will have to wait to see but Spears did manage to make some headlines during a relatively slow news day in entertainment and we learned that she is officially of unsound mind. 

And so ends the ballad of Britney and Jason. Maybe for her next publicity stunt she�ll marry Kramer instead. They might not have much in common, but he would probably be more fun than Jason. 

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