When you’re arguably the most famous person in the world — or, at least, the one with the most intensely devoted fan base — planning your star-studded wedding day to an equally beloved sports hero was always going to be a logistical nightmare. How do you keep the day intimate, keep your guests happy and pull it off without a hitch — all while making it the best day of your life? For Taylor Swift, history offers a playbook: John F. Kennedy Jr. pulled off the exact same trick.
On September 21, 1996, Kennedy — the widely beloved, closely watched scion of Camelot — married the love of his too-brief life, Carolyn Bessette, at the First African Baptist Church on Georgia’s Cumberland Island. The paparazzi frenzy over the secretive event foreshadowed the press scrutiny the couple would face throughout their three brief years of marriage. Photographers and tabloid reporters circled incessantly — but not on the first day of autumn in 1996. Rosemarie Terenzio made sure of that.
Terenzio was Kennedy’s chief of staff and, that summer, his de facto wedding planner. In effect, she wrote the blueprint for how celebrities dodge the press to pull off a beautiful, private wedding. It’s a blueprint that may not even be necessary for Swift and Travis Kelce, who have fueled wedding rumors for weeks, specifically surrounding an alleged Madison Square Garden booking for a post-wedding, fan-facing event.
