The UK may not have braced itself for this week’s heatwave, but the rest of the world appears to be bracing itself for what could become the biggest celebrity wedding in modern history.
A reported one thousand guests. Three days of celebrations. Rumours of Madison Square Garden. I am, of course, talking about Taylor Swift’s wedding to Travis Kelce. And if the rumour mill is to be believed, she isn’t planning a wedding – she’s planning a cultural event.
As a brown woman, I know a thing or two about big, fat weddings. We don’t do anything understated. We don’t even know what that means. Everyone gets an invite: that estranged uncle you haven’t spoken to in a decade, the neighbours, Dad’s work colleague from 1998, your mum’s best friend’s daughter who you’ve met exactly once – even the groom’s third cousin, who now lives in Sheffield but still turns up because “family is family”. If you’ve ever crossed paths, you’re probably on the guest list.
Asian weddings are an art form. It’s about honouring relatives, returning invitations, repaying favours, avoiding offence and making sure nobody spends the next decade asking: “So… why weren’t we invited?”
When I was a kid, I loved them. There was endless food, cousins everywhere and a whole week of celebrations that felt like an adventure. It was like being on family holiday somewhere sunny like Marbella, even if you were actually in a sports hall in Stepney. We’d run riot, disappear for hours and get up to no good while the adults worried about family politics. There was an innocence to it all.
