The Taylor Swift Wedding Broke America’s Brains

LOVE STORY

It was America’s version of a Royal Wedding, like it or not.

Taylor Swift  Travis Kelce attend the men's final match between Italy's Jannik Sinner and USA's Taylor Fritz on day fourteen of the US Open tennis tournament at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York City, on September 8, 2024.
Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images

I’m not used to feeling hungover from a wedding I didn’t even attend.

But who are we not, if not a nation trying to wake up and piece together clues about what happened this weekend?

Was that really Adam Sandler? Was I hallucinating, or was Jennifer Lopez in the bathroom stall next to me? And did all this happen at…Madison Square Garden?

I, of course, did not attend the wedding. I assume my address got mixed up or something.

After days of discourse, most of it unfairly vicious, we can confirm, via Jumbtron, that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce really did get married at Madison Square Garden, the home of the Knicks and every twenty-something Long Islander’s drunk train back to Massapequa.

The lead-up to the actual ceremony drowned out any sweetness pop-culture fans might have felt about the world’s biggest music star getting married.

It was all about how embarrassing it supposedly was to get married at MSG, an arena in the ugliest part of midtown Manhattan. When New Yorkers were being told to turn off their air conditioners, she was hosting a secret-but-not-so-secret wedding reception. Was that thermostat going to be set to 78 degrees?

Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs kisses Taylor Swift after defeating the San Francisco 49ers 25-22 in overtime during Super Bowl LVIII at Allegiant Stadium on February 11, 2024
Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs kisses Taylor Swift after defeating the San Francisco 49ers 25-22 in overtime during Super Bowl LVIII at Allegiant Stadium on February 11, 2024 Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. Every single detail that emerged about what the wedding actually looked like and how it went down this weekend was met with a new round of social-media mockery. (The worst take I saw was that Taylor Swift was trying to steal the thunder from America’s 250th birthday. Get real, people.)

My take: It’s entirely unfair. And Taylor’s wedding seemed…fun???

There are so many more serious reasons why our culture is awful right now, but one of the things I hate most is the immediate impulse to ridicule.

Sure, throwing yourself a wedding at an actual arena is a lot. And having a 1,000-person invite list of celebrities, the cohesion of which is basically “maybe they met her once?” is just very silly. But the vitriol surrounding the Taylor-Travis wedding is out of hand.

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