There’s One Horrific Detail From Taylor Swift’s Wedding That Will Haunt My Nightmares

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Congratulations are in order for Taylor Swift. Not for getting married—though that too, I suppose—but for pulling off something with a much higher degree of difficulty: The most famous woman in the world managed to get married (to football player Travis Kelce) at the most famous arena in the world without any major unauthorized details leaking to the public. And believe me, the public tried: I was one of dozens of journalists who stood outside of Madison Square Garden on Friday afternoon hoping for even the tiniest morsel of information on the festivities. Say what you will about Swift, but her infosec is on point. Fortunately, we’re not going to let a lack of photos and specifics stop us from judging the wedding. Though we don’t have a lot, we have plenty to say about the little we do have, which comes from a mix of an official statement from Swift’s representative, press reports, and our experience on the scene outside the event. Here’s what we know, and our brutally honest assessment of it all. It took place at MSG after all. No one wanted to believe that a woman with infinite resources would choose to get married in a windowless arena in one of New York City’s ugliest neighborhoods. Well, she did. Without knowing what it looked like inside—aside from this one hint of Lover-pink drapery—I can only judge what I witnessed outside: I emerged from the subway at 7th Avenue and 34th Street to find the normally busy streets around MSG and Penn Station eerily empty of traffic and cordoned off. I’m a frivolous person who writes about celebrities for a living, but even I couldn’t quite believe that it had all been shut down and New Yorkers inconvenienced for one person (well, two). Yes, it would have been crazy to do it without crowd control, given her fans, but that still doesn’t mean it was fair, and no, her $26 million in donations doesn’t and can’t entirely make up for it. The streets were cleared in order to allow all the guests arriving in black cars to be able to pull into a tent on 31st Street, so they could arrive without being seen. It seemed great for security and guests—and obnoxious for everyone else. Adam Sandler officiated. Yes, you’re reading that correctly: The Sandman, star of the Grown Ups franchise and so many terrible Netflix movies. It’s just so wrong, on a spiritual level. My body is rejecting it. This is nothing against Sandler, who I love and who I truly believe was robbed of an Oscar nomination for Uncut Gems. (The Academy was right to snub him for Jay Kelly, though, sorry.) He is just absolutely the wrong choice as an officiant for Swift, someone who I usually think of as a serious person, an artist who cares about lyricism and romance, someone who could have asked literally anyone in the world to do her the honor of marrying her. Did she plan the rest of the wedding and let Kelce make this one choice so he would feel like he got to be involved? As for whether they even know each other, Kelce starred with Sandler in Happy Gilmore 2, but Swift apparently loves him as well: She has spoken about how the “happy place” concept in Happy Gilmore partially inspired her song “Wi$h Li$t,” on her most recent album. Apparently he sang an original song for the couple. I generally like Swift and Kelce as a couple, but them picking Sandler as their officiant makes me think of the travesty of a lyric from “So High School” that goes, “Touch me while your boys play Grand Theft Auto.” Instead of choosing someone who makes her the best version of herself, has Swift chosen a partner she can be a dumbass with? Everyone deserves to have fun, I guess, but I truly hate this. Even if Swift’s wedding dress is eventually revealed to have been made out of dalmatian fur, no detail of the day will be worse. The bride and groom both wore white Dior. I have no real opinions on this, but fashion people seem excited—it’s the first wedding dress made under the leadership of head designer Jonathan Anderson. There are no pictures yet—don’t buy the A.I.-generated photos that have circulated. The couple also both wore Louboutin footwear, and she wore Cartier jewelry. Kelce and Swift’s siblings, Jason Kelce and Austin Swift, were their best man and man of honor. They had no other groomsmen or bridesmaids, though Jason’s daughters were flower girls. I actually approve of this. Both Swift and Kelce often travel in entourages, and Swift in particular can be very showy about her girl gang, so it’s refreshing that they didn’t each have 27 attendants. A rare show of restraint. Seemingly every celebrity ever attended—with a few notable exceptions. What was I just saying about restraint? Forget it, because these people invited everyone. Like, do Swift and Kelce even know Millie Bobby Brown? Why was George Stephanopoulos there? Is Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran suddenly one of their dear friends? It kinda seems like they just invited all of Hollywood and all of sports. I understand some of it in a social climbing sense—Swift wants to be a director, so why not continue to cultivate her relationship with Steven Spielberg by throwing him an invite, but the amount of sheer randos (Benson Boone! Joey King! Jessica Alba!) seems a little excessive. Especially considering who wasn’t there: I guess Blake Lively’s friendship with Swift really is over, because she and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, were notably absent. The anti-Lively brigade that has emerged in Lively’s messy lawsuit with Justin Baldoni will no doubt declare this as a victory. Swift walked down the aisle to a string arrangement of her own song. Swift’s love life has always been a huge part of her songwriting, and this wedding represents the culmination of so much, so I kind of think it had to be this way. She will probably release the exact version on Spotify and collect royalties on it, the perfect marriage of art and commerce and marriage. The wedding had its own logo. A few photos obtained by the Daily Mail show a graphic featuring two T’s and a heart embellished on furniture and décor and embroidered into custom handkerchiefs. Cute, I guess, but unfortunately it reminds me of Kai Trump’s cursed line of sweatshirts. And must everything be so branded? “So it’s gonna be forever …” Those aforementioned handkerchiefs also had this phrase, a line from Swift’s song “Blank Space” embroidered onto them. The song is apparently a favorite of Kelce’s. But is including the ellipses not ominous? The next line in the song goes, “Or it’s gonna go down in flames.” I would have rethought this one. “JUST&T MARRIED” flashed on screens outside MSG. Around 7:30 p.m., presumably after the couple had said “I do,” this phrase suddenly appeared to observers outside the arena. It was a nice touch that they shared this update, and struck me as an elegant compromise between public and private. The phrase itself though, JUST&T MARRIED? I kinda think they could have done better. Am I supposed to be thinking of AT&T, the cellphone carrier, when I look at it? After the wedding, a muscle car with the license plate “JST&T MRD” was seen being removed from MSG, a completely illegible set of letters that I’m sure they spent a reasonable sum of money on. May the marriage and the MRD couple be more successful than their attempts at wordplay.