Taylor Swift's wedding: Why we're obsessed with this and other celebrity nuptials

Even before your English teacher and your gym teacher tie the knot on Friday, this has already become the wedding of the century, if measured in clicks, likes, hearts, thumbs-up (or down), Instagram posts, and (naturally) speculation.

Since Taylor Swift announced her engagement to Travis Kelce on Instagram with that English/gym teacher quip last August (37 million likes), she's revealed nothing, yielding a feedback loop of more speculation, clicks, likes, hearts and so on, although The Associated Press on Wednesday confirmed through a source that the wedding would take place at Madison Square Garden.

Why, then, do we obsess over celebrity weddings — this one in particular? Experts say the reasons are deep and superficial, as modern as right now, as ancient as Antony and Cleopatra. But this one feels different. "Yeah, it's a really fascinating situation about a fascinating person," admits Alicia Bosley, an associate professor at Hofstra who runs the School of Health Science's marriage and family therapy program.

It sure is, beginning with that venue. Friday's ceremony won't be on a cliff overlooking the Pacific (Sean Penn, Madonna), a Manhattan apartment (Jay-Z, Beyoncé), a private suite at the Aladdin (Elvis and Priscilla), a village in Botswana (Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor), or an island off Georgia (John F. Kennedy Jr, Carolyn Bessette.) It's one of the best-known arenas in the world where a hiding-in-plain-sight wedding is about to unfold over the next two days.

The wedding industrial complex — with its over-the-top-expensive bridal gowns, three-day events, destination ceremonies — most likely launched on July 29, 1981, with the marriage of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer. Coincidentally, that took place just as the institution of marriage itself went into a free fall. Marriages are down as much as 60% since the late '70s, according to one 2023 study by the National Center for Family & Marriage Research. Hofstra's Bosley says a kind of inverse-reaction has set in, where the fascination with spectacle weddings grew because marriages have declined. It's all part of mass vicarious consumption, just as the means of that consumption — unscripted TV and social media — have boomed.

After "Bridezillas" arrived in 2004, "Say Yes to the Dress" followed, along with "Four Weddings," "Platinum Weddings, "My Fair Wedding," "I Found the Gown," "90 Day Fiance," and "Married at First Site." Netflix's "Love is Blind" -- like "The Bachelor," wedding-adjacent -- is one of the biggest hits on streaming TV.

"Marriage has lost popularity the last 50 years but we haven't completely let go of it either," says Bosley. "There are a lot of people who write it off outwardly, but still have some deep-down hope that it'll work out for them someday."

Then there's social media, and its attendant offshoots -- "influencer weddings," "Instagrammable moments," "content creators," and "Pinterest scrolls." TikTok is a sea of curated wedding content, of proposal reactions, dress reveals, dance entrances, day-in-the-life moments, alongside "crowd-sourced judgments." (Don't like that dress? Be sure to let the bride-to-be know!)

The art of "participatory" social media fandom is one of or Swift's many talents, says Hannah Judson, a PhD candidate at Stony Brook University who teaches a summer class on the "Sociology of Taylor Swift."

"You traditionally tend to think of celebrity culture in terms of people who are famous for the sake of being famous, and who are drip-fed to us through mass information technologies — first radio and now social media — but the shift in information technology has created a huge shift in the ways we engage with celebrity culture. You can now comment on your favorite celebrity, or send them a DM, or go to the snark page on Reddit."

Judson adds that "the best term for this phenomenon is a feeling that a celebrity can be your best friend. That's significantly intensified" in recent years, in large measure due to Swift.

"She was one of the first musicians to take advantage of social media as a way of connecting with her fans. That's why people are so invested in her wedding. She's embodied life experiences for generations of fans."