How do we know who attended Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s star-studded 1,000-guest wedding this weekend, despite the details being as closely guarded as national security secrets?
Because the A-listers who attended from the world of movies, TV, music, sports, fashion and the arts were dying to tell us about it — or at least strongly imply it.
The union of Swift and Kelce, two of the biggest celebrities in the world, managed to completely dominate the internet despite the fact that guests reportedly had to check their phones at the door and sign NDAs. Perhaps the biggest trend of the weekend was a superstar guest posting themselves on Instagram or TikTok in an ultra-glam, black-tie fit paired with an enigmatic caption. If you know, you know.
Pop star and Taylor protégé Gracie Abrams posted a photo of herself in a red, glittering gown, captioned only with the calendar emoji, lumped in with a bunch of random photos in what‘s known as a dump. Patrick Mahomes, Kelce’s best friend and teammate, and his wife, Brittany, captioned their glam getting-ready photos with matching white hearts. Selena Gomez, one of Taylor’s longtime besties, hasn’t posted on her grid yet — but her makeup artist and hairstylist have, sharing her sparkling gold look, while the account of fashion designer Oscar de la Renta posted her rehearsal dinner outfit.
It wasn’t a shock to see these folks in attendance, but there were some surprise guests who used this tactic to hint they snagged the invitation. Jennifer Lopez posed in a black gown and went with just the champagne toast emoji as her caption; Elizabeth Banks took a similar emoji-laden route with “💗🥂”. Dee Ocleppo Hilfiger’s posted a selfie with Tommy Hilfiger in the car and captioned it “Yup”. Some celebrities like Jessica Alba, who starred in Swift’s “Bad Blood” music video back in 2015, and known Swiftie Adam Scottwere ever-so-slightly more direct, congratulating “T&T” beneath their photos. The band the Chainsmokers wrote: “New York has too much to celebrate” beneath a photo of them in tuxedos (the rest of the images that followed were from their past performances).
It was a great opportunity to harness Taylor’s lyrics on Instagram without seeming cringe, like Kelsea Ballerini, who combined two of her song titles (“long live a love story”), and Jessica Chastain, who wrote, “I don’t know about you … but I’m feeling 1922.”
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There were other sly details also revealed in the celebrity posts. Longtime Swift friend Lena Dunham captioned her post: “Available going forward for weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, and sweet sixteens (gay ones). I love both my husbands and I love love 💒💍🥰,” which is especially funny if the rumors are true that she shocked the crowd at the rehearsal dinner with a raunchy joke. She gets extra credit for revealing via a selfie that she carpooled with author Zadie Smith and actor Andrew Scott.
The wedding was as star-studded as the Met Gala, but the posts about it are as noncommittal and cryptic as a Gen-Zer’s social media. Even celebrities are shackled to the conventions of casual Instagram, a style of posting on the internet in which people are forced to harness a chill vibe to suggest they don’t care if you make a big deal about what they’ve shared. The T&T wedding posts imply “Nothing to see here — except me! I got the invite!”
It’s brilliant to me, a fan of scouring the internet for clues as to what Taylor’s up to. The queen of Easter eggs has created — inadvertently or not — a scavenger hunt for celebrities who made the cut. The posts are easy to replicate, since many of the photos were seemingly taken in hotel rooms or in transit, which makes sense if phones were truly banned from the venue. Anyone could pretend that they were there, including the ever-trolling Amy Schumer, leaving a sense of mystery still swirling around the event that was perhaps more talked about than America’s 250th birthday.
Photographs from inside the wedding are sure to trickle out in the days and weeks to come, but for now we’ve got casual, messy photos from people we weren’t even aware knew Taylor and Travis like that. It’s a feast for those of us who are putting together the evening like a 13,00-piece jigsaw puzzle.
See the rest of the apparent guests and what they’ve shared here.
