Mariah Carey Reveals Why She Wore Her Real Wedding Dress in the ‘We Belong Together’ Video

You gotta love a practical pop star. When shooting her 2005 music video for smash hit “We Belong Together,” Mariah Carey got a second life out of her wedding dress from her nuptials to first husband Tommy Mottola — and in a new episode of Vevo’s Footnotes posted Friday (April 18), she explained the simple reason why.

Breaking down how the cinematic visual — which finds the Songbird Supreme playing a runaway bride — Carey told Vevo that she “really loved the fashion choices, going from wearing a black two-piece to wearing a wedding dress by Vera Wang” for “We Belong Together.”

“Since I was going to do a scene with a wedding dress, rather than spend tons of money on a new dress, we just used the one I had lying around!” she quipped.

The vocalist wed Mottola, a high-ranking executive at her former label, Columbia/Sony Music, in 1993. They were married for about five years before parting ways, with Carey going on to release “We Belong Together” via new label Island Records in 2005. The track spent 14 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — one of the longest runs at the chart’s summit of all time — while Carey’s 2005 album, The Emancipation of Mimi, topped the Billboard 200 for two weeks.

“I’m really happy that the label believed in me and let me have this big dramatic video,” the musician added in Footnotes. “And I’m happier that it resonated with a lot of people who are still enjoying this song today.”

In celebration of Emancipation of Mimi‘s 20th anniversary, Carey — who has also been married to now-ex Nick Cannon, with whom she shares twin children — recently announced that a sprawling extended version of the album is coming soon. Packed with bonus tracks, new and old remixes and collaborations, instrumentals, a capella takes and live recordings, the two-disc vinyl suite will drop via Def Jam Records/UMe on May 30.

Watch the “We Belong Together” music video above.