Hometown Friends on Britney Spears Wedding

L A S   V E G A S, Jan. 6, 2004 -- While Britney Spears pulled off her own celebrity wedding without the expensive designer dress, the celebrity guest list or prying paparazzi trying to get the golden shot, she untied the knot in traditional celebrity fashion — as quickly and quietly as possible.

But what happens in Las Vegas doesn't stay in Las Vegas when you are Britney Spears.

The pop star's wedding resulted in a marriage that lasted just 55 hours, but the buzz surrounding her short-lived union with childhood friend Jason Alexander isn't likely to die down soon.

While Spears, who reportedly snuck out of the Palm Hotel in Las Vegas Monday morning, isn't talking, Alexander has tried to offer an explanation for the impulsive nuptials.

"We were in Las Vegas … we're sitting in the [hotel] room and we're like 'let's go do something, let's go get married," Alexander told the syndicated TV show Inside Edition

Alexander said he and Spears were perfectly sober when they decided to wed at about 5:30 a.m. Saturday at a Las Vegas wedding chapel.

Bonnie Fuller, the editorial director of Star magazine — which will publish a picture of Spears and Alexander receiving their marriage license — says the pop star's move has sent some of her fans into a state of panic.

"We went on the Britney fan Web sites and they were going wild," Fuller said on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. "Many were disappointed in her. They wanted her to have a wonderful, lavish white wedding," Fuller said.

Hometown friends of Spears and Alexander, a junior at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, La., say the short-lived marriage was just a fun joke, and nothing more.

"Good friends. That's all it is," said Jared Prescott of Kentwood. "We come from a small town, there's only one daycare and everybody knows everybody else. They were just good friends, never a couple."

Kent Smith, another one of Alexander's close friends, says the town is getting a lot of attention over the Las Vegas wedding and no one, including Alexander, is used to being in the spotlight.

Alexander's sister, Amanda, says everyone in Kentwood — population 2,205 — is just having a good laugh over the short-lived Las Vegas wedding.

"Everyone was surprised, we knew it was a joke and they were doing something crazy, and it's New Year's and stuff, no one took it a big deal, not around here anyway, everyone else did, but not around here," she said.

It took a judge about two hours Monday to act on the petition for annulment, which was filed at 10:12 a.m. in Clark County Family Court. The petition said "Plaintiff Spears lacked understanding of her actions to the extent that she was incapable of agreeing to the marriage."

Although Spears and Alexander have been friends for at least a decade, the petition stated that the plaintiff [Spears] and the defendant [Alexander] didn't 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," the petition went on to say, "they are so incompatible that there was a want of understanding of each other's actions in entering into thismarriage."

While many are now referring to Alexander as Spears' ex-husband, an annulment actually dissolves a marriage as if it never happened.

An annulment acknowledges that there was some inherent problem with the marriage contract or how it was executed

Spears and Alexander reportedly traveled by limousine to the Little White Wedding Chapel on the Las Vegas Strip. When they arrived, the chapel staff sent them to get a marriage license. After obtaining the necessary documents, Spears and Alexander returned to the chapel and carried out their wedding plans.

The bride wore a baseball cap and torn jeans down the aisle and was reportedly escorted by a Palms limousine driver.

Spears' record label, Jive, released a statement saying that Spears and Alexander "took a joke too far."The wedding chapel's owner and one of its ministers have said that it was clear to them that Spears and Alexander were sober during the early morning nuptials.