‘Beniffer’ wedding on Kaua‘i for real?

“Due to the excessive media attention surrounding our wedding, we have decided to postpone the date.”

That’s the official word from New York-based spokesmen for the actress Jennifer Lopez and the actor Ben Affleck.

Even so, rumors are flying on Kaua‘i, in Honolulu and across the globe that the couple is to be married today at an estate near the Kilauea Lighthouse.

One observer of the celebrity social scene on the North Shore calls the press statement, “just a gimmick,” and believes the wedding is on for today, and on the North Shore.

“There’s been…lots of talk” about the wedding, the source says, and reports word of sightings of celebrities with possible ties to the wedding in Hanalei.

Entertainment columnist Wayne Harada of the Honolulu Advertiser – who has family ties in the Hanalei area – reported yesterday that the couple had called off a wedding planned for Santa Barbara, Calif. this weekend. But that might have been done to throw off Mainland media and keep them away from Kaua‘i, Harada wrote.

In July Affleck told a Swiss magazine that the couple plans to release 500 white doves at the end of the ceremony. And in spite of the apparent secrecy over the hotly followed celebrity nuptials, this summer Lopez, who has been married twice, told the BBC: “If people want to be outside and they want to take our picture, then OK. We’re not going to be with the 24 million security guards. We wanna just have a nice wedding, have it be a beautiful day and if there happen to be cameras outside, then that’s fine. We’re not gonna obsess over them.”

A documentary screened recently on the American Movie Channel detailed the trouble – and the profit – that paparazzi faced in taking photos of the wedding of “Friends” co-star Matt Leblanc held at Anini Vista earlier this year. The wedding of Lopez and Affleck was earlier reported as being set for that weekend.