Maybe U.S. cities should rethink the idea of entering an Olympics-host-style bidding war to become the destination for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding. Meanwhile, Swifties may also need to take their idol’s advice and “calm down,” lowering their expectations about how much of the most amazing and romantic wedding spectacle in the history of wedding spectacles they will be able to witness.
A new report says that Swift and Kelce are not planning a big, splashy wedding — in the manner of a globally televised British royal event or similar to the oligarchic extravagance displayed by Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez. Instead, Page Six said that the world’s most famous and generally likable engaged couple are looking to keep things more modest and tasteful and tie the knot in a ceremony that will be “private” and “casual,” and in the presence of only family and close friends.
“It will be more casual than people think,” a source told Page Six Wednesday, following the couple’s big Instagram announcement Tuesday that “your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”
The pop superstar and the NFL player, both 35, sparked a global media frenzy with their announcement Tuesday that they were engaged after two years of dating. Their announcement was accompanied by a carousel of photos that showed the two in a lush “enchanted garden” filled with flowers, during and after Kelce was depicted as getting down on one knee to propose. On Swift’s finger, he slipped a vintage-looking, old mine brilliant-cut diamond ring that could be worth up to $1 million, as Page Six also reported.
The frenzy over the past 24 hours has included speculation on how many weeks they’ve actually been engaged and how Swift probably “micromanaged” the timing of the announcement for maximum impact. The father of the Kansas City Chiefs tight end also shared how his son planned to pop the question, while Martha Stewart weighed in on the news with an offer to be the wedding planner, Other reports looked into which famous celebrities or athletes might be in the wedding party, while other reports more generally discussed the timing and location of what could be considered the wedding of the century.
Vulture moreover posted a half-joking essay about how different cities the United States should offer to be the wedding location in order to reap the economic benefits. Just as thousands of people traveled to cities that hosted Swift’s Eras Tour performances, these fans also might be inclined to book hotel rooms in the place and at the time that the wedding is taking place, in order to catch even fleeting glimpses of their idol, coming and going from different venues.
If Swift and Kelce indeed plan to keep the wedding intimate and “casual,” they own multiple homes between them that could make for lovely, “private” venues. Notably, Swift has her Rhode Island mansion where she has hosted a number of July 4 parties over the years and which was the inspiration of her album, “The Last Great American Dynasty,” Vulture reported. For his part, Kelce has his mansion outside Kansas City, where he and Swift staged their engagement photos.
Vulture writer Nicholas Quah said that the “smart money” for a wedding location points to cities “central to Taylor lore.” Besides Rhode Island, that would also mean New York, Nashville and London, or even her actual hometown of Reading, Pennsylvania. Travis also “brings his own claims, too, between his Ohio roots and his Kansas City legacy, where he has spent his entire career.
Los Angeles also is “technically an option,” Quah said. “But a California wedding just feels so generic, and it certainly lacks the mythological zhuzh this particular union clearly demands.”
