Peter Facinelli is in no hurry to walk down the aisle with fiancée Lily Anne Harrison more than three years after getting engaged.
“In the beginning, it was like, ‘Let’s get [married],’ then COVID happened,” Facinelli, 49, exclusively told Us Weekly this month. “Then we were like, ‘Let’s push it ‘til after COVID,’ and then it became, ‘Oh, we’re having a baby.’”
Facinelli explained that he and Harrison, 34, are “focused more on” raising their son, Jack, now 11 months. “It became more about, ‘Well, when’s the baptism going to happen for the baby?’ instead of the wedding,” he told Us.
Facinelli and Harrison began dating in 2016 following his split from Jaimie Alexander. Us confirmed four years later that Facinelli and Harrison got engaged in Mexico. Harrison confirmed her pregnancy during a June 2022 appearance at RomaDrama fan convention in Florida and gave birth to Jack three months later.
While they’ve pressed pause on their wedding plans for now, Facinelli told Us that the ceremony feels like a formality. “I consider myself married,” he continued. “For me, it’s a piece of paper and a party, so we’re going to get to it at some point. Right now, we’ve got our hands full with the baby. … But we talk about it all the time. ‘Should we do it? When do we have a window to do it?’”
The couple might hold off even longer on their nuptials so Jack can have some involvement in the ceremony. “I’m not too worried about it,” Facinelli said. “For us, we wake up and marriage is a living, breathing thing, and we live it every day. … It’s about the commitment to us and the actual wedding is more of a party, you know what I mean?”
Since welcoming their first baby together, Facinelli has found even more reasons to love his future wife. “Lily’s just such a wonderful partner,” he gushed. “I mean, honestly, I learned so much from her. She’s so patient, so loving. I’m so blessed to have her in my life, and she’s a fantastic mom.”
Parenting keeps them both busy, but the soon-to-be spouses are more committed to one another than ever. “We cherish the moments that we have together where if he’s having a nap, we’ll try to figure out something to do together. Or … sometimes the nanny will watch Jack and we’ll go to lunch and it’ll be a really special date time for us. Or if we get to go see a movie,” Facinelli told Us.
He continued: “It’s the quality versus quantity, but we’re always together. And even in those moments where we’re parenting Jack, we’re just on the same team and such great teammates, you know what I mean? And there for each other, sometimes [we] just grab each other’s hands and squeeze each other’s hands. And we know that means, ‘Hey, I love you.’ … We don’t have to say it.
Facinelli was previously married to Jennie Garth from 2001 to 2013. The exes share daughters Luca, 25, Lola, 20, and Fiona, who turns 17 in September.
Since calling it quits, Facinelli and Garth, 51, have done their best to stay on good terms for their kids. During an April 2022 episode of the “Allison Interviews” podcast, Facinelli opened up about the biggest lesson he learned from his divorce.
“A relationship is like a tree,” he said at the time. “In the beginning, if it starts to bend you can correct it, but if you allow it to continue on that path there is nothing you can do to bend it back because it has already grown in that way and solidified. … I would say that is what I learned [from my marriage], is to just not get into bad habits.”
With reporting by Leanne Aciz Stanton
