Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce will celebrate their wedding at New York's Madison Square Garden this weekend, with preparations already in full swing after the couple donated $26m (£19m) to 20 charities, a representative confirmed. The donations, announced days before the ceremony, include food banks, children's hospitals and music education programs in cities significant to the couple: Nashville, Kansas City and New York.
The nuptials, expected to be the showbiz event of the decade, will see 1,000 guests gather at the iconic arena for a ceremony on Friday, following a rehearsal dinner for 100 at the Infosys Theater on Thursday evening. The permit, obtained by the Guardian, shows a pre-party at 6.30pm Thursday, with the main event from 5pm Friday until 4am Saturday. Among those spotted arriving in New York are Ed Sheeran, Sabrina Carpenter, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Graham Norton, who Swift told last year on his show that her wedding would be “huge” and “fun to plan” because she wanted a large-scale affair.
“Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce donated $26m to 20 charities before their wedding at Madison Square Garden this weekend.”
Swift and Kelce, whose combined wealth is estimated at $2.2bn (£1.6bn), first met when Kelce attended her Eras Tour show in Kansas City on 8 July 2023, where he tried to give her a friendship bracelet with his phone number. They went public on 24 September that year and announced their engagement in an Instagram post last August. Now, as the couple prepares to tie the knot, fans have been analyzing the $26m figure, noting it is double Swift's favourite number, 13.
Forbes estimates the wedding will cost at least $20m, with security alone costing $3m to $5m, according to former Secret Service agent Bill Gage. One hundred NYPD officers are reportedly on standby to keep the celebrations private. Inside the arena, crews have been seen unloading a grand piano, carpets and tree branches, though a source told People there will be no “castle”, just “carpets and canopies” befitting a wedding venue.
Not all of Swift's famous friends are expected to attend, however. Fans have speculated that Katy Perry, currently performing in England, did not receive an invite, with one Reddit user saying: “Katy is in UK all weekend so she defo didn’t get an invite.” The pair's past feud, which began in 2013 over a business dispute involving backup dancers, was thought to be the subject of Swift's song Bad Blood, though they publicly made amends in 2019 when Perry appeared in the You Need To Calm Down video.
Swift-watcher Malcolm Mackenzie predicted the wedding would be “Beatlemania, Pride and Lady Di marrying Charles combined”. As the final preparations take shape, the question remains whether the $26m donation is the last of the couple's surprises before they say “I do”.