Justin Hartley reflected on his first wedding ceremony with Sofia Pernas, which took place poolside in their home.
During the Monday, October 21, episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Hartley, 47, opened up about how he and Pernas, 35, quietly exchanged their vows.
“We actually had a justice of the peace come over to the house with a mask on. Sofia and I got out of the pool — and we had our bathing suits on,” Hartley said of their low-key 2021 nuptials that took place during the height of the COVID pandemic.
“We were like, ‘We should do this. We should get married! We love each other. This is gonna be amazing,’” Hartley continued. “Then within a week, we were able to coordinate this lawyer to come over and said, ‘Do you do this?’ And we were like, ‘Yeah, we love it.’ And we’re married. It was the best wedding in the world because we got right back in the pool. We were like, ‘Margaritas!’”
Hartley and Pernas had a “really small” and intimate wedding ceremony later with their loved ones, he explained, adding, “I wanted to see her in a wedding dress and she wanted to do it. We had to go through it. It was amazing, wonderful.”
The couple originally met on the set of The Young and The Restless in 2015. They subsequently went their separate ways before reconnecting years later off screen. broke the news in May 2020, that the pair were dating and, one year later, tied the knot.
“You meet in different capacities. We didn’t work together that closely, and we didn’t work together that long. I knew that she was very kind and very nice. I liked being around her. But I was in a different place in my life. I wasn’t available,” Hartley told Haute Living in December 2021 of being introduced to Pernas while he was still married to Chrishell Stause. “Timing has a lot to do with that. I’m very lucky to not only have found ‘The One,’ but I found her when she was available and the timing was right.”
At the time,Hartley gushed over his effortless relationship with Pernas.
“It’s incredible when you’re not forcing things. It doesn’t have to be that hard,” he noted. “You just meet the right person and you just go, ‘Oh, this is amazing. It’s just so wonderful!’ You’re so attracted and so attached to this person. You just love this person so much.”
He concluded: “When I remet her, I just knew. It’s so interesting about the human heart and human mind. It’s not a codependency — I’m just at peace with myself. I feel loved and I feel appreciated. I know she feels the same way.”
After their wedding, Hartley and Pernas collaborated on Quantum Leap before she joined his CBS series,
“She’s wonderful. I mean, if I had my choice, I’d spend every minute with her,” Hartley told Us in July. “What’s really cool is when you meet someone that means so much to you, that you’re so proud to be with and so proud of, and just such a fan of, and to get to see her work, because she’s such a talented actor. She elevates scenes, and so it makes my job easier, actually. But yeah, it’s just wonderful to work with her.”
