Britney, Justin to Marry, She Reveals

By Stephen M. Silverman

01/20/2002 at 10:00 PM EST

There are wedding bells ahead for Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, the pop princess revealed over the weekend. In a TV interview Saturday at MIDEM, an international music conference in the south of France, Spears, 20, told Britain's ITV Saturday morning music show "CD:UK" that she and longtime boyfriend Timberlake, also 20, are to be married. "It will happen some time in the future, but not this year," she admitted to the show's host, Cat Deeley. Not reported was whether or not she was sporting an engagement ring, though her oft-exposed belly button is pierced. Spears's announcement flies in the face of the couple's long-held insistence that they are not engaged. (Last year the two reportedly bought a $3 million Los Angeles mansion, though some reports say the two are never without chaperones there.) She also has sworn that the relationship between the two has been rated G from the time they first met as kids on "The Mickey Mouse Show." (They were both 11 at the time.)