Jennifer Hudson hits the road on Tuesday, kicking off her headlining trek with Robin Thicke in Albany, New York’s Palace Theater. And in the run up to her live return, she sat down with Access Hollywood’s Shaun Robinson to talk about the tour and her upcoming wedding to fiance David Otunga.
Hudson revealed that Otunga went to great lengths to pick out her engagement ring, a stunning sparkler.
“David picked it out to match my studs,” Hudson said. “He went back to Neil Lane and he said he had to get the ring to go with it!”
Hudson was beaming while sharing the news of her engagement to Otunga, who she has been dating for a year-and-a-half.
“So you’ve set a date?” Robinson asked.
“Well, it’s a secret date,” Hudson responded coyly.
While she’s keeping mum on their wedding date, Hudson did reveal the couple’s nuptials will be original.
“We’re both very creative and kind of unique,” she said. “I don’t want to have the same exact wedding as everyone else… Lord, he might come walking down the aisle for all we know.”
Hudson said she hasn’t picked out a dress for the big date for one big reason.
“I’m gonna design my own dress,” she said. “I want to design it… Definitely classic, more traditional than anything. I want it to be nice and traditional, but very classy, very classy.”
And she expects her four-footed best friends to be in attendance.
“I want my dogs to be in my wedding. I am so serious,” she said of her three pups, two of which are named after awards she once hoped to win and now has. “Like Oscar might be the ring bearer or something.
“We’ll send them down the aisle with a little tux or something, a little dress,” Hudson added of her other canines, Grammy and Dreamgirl.
And while the wedding and her tour are at the forefront of her mind, Hudson is also already thinking of expanding her family.
“I definitely want a family,” she said. “You know, I’m almost 30 now, so they gotta get started sometime.”
Hudson said she’s unsure if she’ll sing at her own wedding, but there’s a chance it could happen.
“I sang for everybody else’s wedding, I might as well sing for my own,” she joked. “Actually, that’s how I started.”
“You were a wedding singer?” Robinson asked.
“My god, I was the wedding singer, the funeral signer, sang at every church program, anything I could sing at, I sang for,” Hudson said. “I used to make $25 a song and I thought that was a lot of money at the time… so I went from that to this. It’s like, ‘Wow!’”
From wedding singer to winning an Oscar and taking home a Grammy, and this week hitting the road on her first headlining tour ever, with Robin Thicke — Hudson has come a long way.
“I’m excited. I mean, I never would have guessed that I had to sing like 18-20 songs. I was like, ‘What? How many?’” Hudson laughed. “Y’all gonna have to help me out.”
And good news for Hudson fans, she expects to include some of the numbers from film career in her set.
“Of course, I’m going to do some ‘Dreamgirls’ stuff,” she said, confirming “I’m Telling You” will be broken out.
“I’m gonna have to find somebody to sing it with me. I don’t mind sharing, the spotlight at all,” she added. “And I get to do a diva medley, a tribute to my favorite divas.”
Tune into Access Hollywood on Tuesday for part 2 of our exclusive interview with Hudson.