For the first time in many years, I am not spending the first weekend of July at someone else’s wedding (or indeed, my own). For once, there is no rural hotel, miles away from a train station. No pre-ordered roast beef served at 32 degrees in a marquee. No perusing the wedding registry trying to work out the socially acceptable minimum to spend on scalloped-edged homeware.
Only, in a sense, we are all attending a wedding this weekend, because our parasocial, internet stranger best friend Taylor Swift is getting married. This is the biggest celebrity wedding in recent history – so big that the rehearsal dinner was reported on BBC Radio 4 yesterday. Swift is marrying American football player Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden, which in British terms is a bit like having it at the O2. There are reportedly 1,000 guests, a castle and garden area.
Obviously no-one was ever going to be able to be normal about Swift’s wedding. Some of her fans are horrified that a woman they perceive as intellectual and creative is having a wedding in a building where there’s a jumbotron. Was I slightly disbelieving when this was first floated? Yes. Do I now think it makes perfect sense? Also yes.
I can, and happily will, bore anyone who’ll listen about why MSG is a very good choice of venue (it’s basically the only place on earth where helicopters and drones can’t follow her around. She and Travis are both comfortable in stadia. She’s a billionaire; she can make the inside of it look like literally anything she likes. But I do become frustrated when, during my nightly scroll of mind-rotting internet, I come across people who are acting as if we’re somehow entitled to the details of the wedding.
