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CNN Special Reports
I Do: The Taylor And Travis Era. Aired 9-10p ET
Aired December 20, 2025 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[21:00:00]
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In the United States, women are encouraged to dream of their wedding.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Every single decade there is one major celebrity wedding. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's wedding. This is going to be the wedding of the decade.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Here you have the star of an NFL team. The Kansas City Chiefs are once again Super Bowl champions. You have a mega songwriter superstar.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Eras is considered the highest grossing tour of all time.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Feels like it's a bit of a spectacle. Of course.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Taylor Swift's engagement is like our Super Bowl. She will influence the industry heavily.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, Travis. Hey, Taylor.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So now that she is coupling up, one wonders whether fans will read that as a capitulation to a more traditional set of values.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She can signal that getting married is a good thing. That could be kind of a major inflection point in the culture.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It says a lot about our country that we have dragged Taylor Swift into a culture war about marriage.
KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: You think the best thing they could do is for Taylor Swift to have a bunch of kids?
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: I want them to go out and have babies and populate the earth.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everyone has dreams about how they wish she would because she has the biggest audience and the biggest platform of all.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There is so much buzz right now about Taylor and Travis wedding.
COOPER LAWRENCE, ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER: We've been following the story for so long. How's this relationship going to end? Oh, my God. It's ending in a wedding.
ANNIE ZALESKI, NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR AND MUSIC HISTORIAN: We've seen her ups and downs in her romantic life. We've seen the ups and downs in her lyrics. Having your first heartbreak, finding a boyfriend, losing a boyfriend, dealing with your own insecurities.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Her entire life is out there on the table, and people love that. They love what she's giving them.
TAYLOR SWIFT, SINGER-SONGWRITER: No one told us it was country night. Y'all want to hear some country music?
ZALESKI: Taylor had her first album out when she was still in high school.
SWIFT: Right now, you want to hear some Taylor Swift? You're in the right place.
ZALESKI: You know, when we're teenagers and you think about pining after someone who either doesn't know you exist or will not give you the time of day.
Drew looks at me I fake a smile so he won't see that I want and I'm needing everything that we should be "Teardrops on My Guitar" is a classic tale of unrequited love. You know, she was really a trendsetter and a trailblazer for teenage girls and their feelings and their thoughts and their emotions.
TAYLOR: In December, that's cool, though. MTV. That's my first time on MTV.
ZALESKI: We would see Taylor dating people, and those little hints to those relationships would show up in her lyrics.
SWIFT: I love you, too. Hi.
LAWRENCE: She's not just singing love songs. She reveals things about her own life. She reveals things that most other pop stars hire a publicist to hide.
ZALESKI: She wrote "Forever and Always" after a very brief relationship she had with Joe Jonas. The song is basically about her waiting by the phone and her getting ghosted.
I stare at the phone. He still hasn't called. And then you feel so low, you can't feel nothing at all. And you flashback to when he said forever and always.
SAMI SAGE, CO-FOUNDER, BETCHES MEDIA: So there must be a lot of guys that are totally intimidated to ask you out.
SWIFT: I think that guys are afraid to ask me out because they know that I'd write a song about them.
SAGE: She really put words to feelings that maybe you could never articulate and realized that, you know, it's. We are not alone in some of these things.
SWIFT: Well, I think that the songwriting has definitely been what set me apart, and without it, I don't think I would have had the same career.
SAGE: Red has always been her pivot point into a more sophisticated, adult direction.
JORDANA ABRAHAM, CO-FOUNDER, BETCHES MEDIA: All too well. It really just depicts that exact sense of, like, this person likes me, but maybe not on the same level and sort of the heartache that comes from that.
[21:05:00]
LAWRENCE: We've been following her romances in the public eye and the tabloids and entertainment news for so long.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When she went out on a date, you knew about it. When she went into a certain place, you knew about it.
ESTHER LEE, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, THE KNOT: And she herself has been through the ups and downs of what it's like to kiss numerous frogs.
SAGE: You know, you had Jonas, Taylor Lautner, John Mayer, Jake Gyllenhaal.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jake in particular really broke her heart. She was only about 21 when they dated and it was devastating for her.
SAGE: We have Connor Kennedy, Harry Styles. You might --
ABRAHAM: Calvin Harris.
SAGE: Calvin Harris, Tom Hiddleston, Joe Alwyn.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When she had a relationship with Joe Alwyn, she hid from the camera. They would show up in different places and sneak in back doors. And I think for her that felt disingenuous.
SAGE: Then there was a brief moment where she appeared to be dating Matty Healy.
ALEX GOLDSCHMIDT, TAYLOR SWIFT SUPER FAN: We have all followed her journey for love and I think we all have become warriors in fighting for her to be successful in love.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There is a true sense of authenticity to who she is.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Again, Entertainer of the Year.
SWIFT: I am so excited. I think, you know, for me it's been unbelievable.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Combined with that raw talent, we see arguably the most successful artist of this time.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We love you, Taylor.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you ready for it? Taylor Swift's Eras Tour is poised to break $2 billion. And that's just in North America.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Eras Tour was the highest grossing tour of all time.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Welcome to the Eras Tour.
CARI CHAMPION, JOURNALIST: Take a city like New Orleans. Record breaking sales in terms of hotels, even Lyfts and Ubers. In Los Angeles, she brought in, you know, over $300 million.
GOLDSCHMIDT: For her to not only be at the top of her career musically, but to also have finally found the partner that supports her. No one is more deserving of a fairy tale ending than Taylor Swift.
LEE: Tuesday, August 26, 2025 will forever be recorded in the memories of The Knot staff.
HUNT: Some other breaking news. The only breaking news we're actually following today. It's a love story.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And she said yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Taylor Swift has announced her engagement to football player Travis Kelce.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: The big news, the two are officially engaged.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The fact that Taylor got engaged was massive. Like, we're talking, this is like Princess Diane level sort of news.
SAGE: I found myself without a phone for a brief afternoon. So never get off your phone is the lesson because Taylor Swift might get engaged.
RACHEL TASHJIAN, CNN SENIOR STYLE REPORTER: Taylor Swift's engagement announcement was a beautifully captured Instagram image filled with flowers. I mean, an incredible amount of beautiful floral arrangements and vessels and a trellis behind her. She was wearing a perfect summer dress. Travis Kelce is wearing shorts.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's them far away in the garden. There's something up close, but his back is towards us.
LEE: And the caption said, you English teacher and your --
TASHJIAN: And your gym teacher are getting married.
ABRAHAM: Obviously it's a little nicer because she's a celebrity, but it's not -- it doesn't feel so unattainable. So out of reach for her fans. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Taylor was wearing a very simple sundress by Polo
Ralph Lauren, and that dress sold out immediately.
LEE: After the engagement, we were pulling in data. We found that there was actually a 70 percent increase in searches for garden after Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's proposal.
BETH HELMSTETTER, WEDDING DESIGNER: Taylor Swift's wedding will influence trends for years to come. She will influence details from wedding cake style and textiles chosen. Anything she shares publicly will influence the industry heavily.
LEE: Whatever Taylor Swift does, the people will follow. We found that an estimated $2.2 billion in spend over the next two years would be projected from Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's wedding alone.
HAYLEY PAIGE, WEDDING DRESS DESIGNER: Two people falling in love and getting married. You know, it's not revolutionary, it's not groundbreaking. But when you think about the impact these two people have had in their respective careers and on generations, there's an elevation that comes with it.
So this is my dress den, you would be shocked at how many ways there are to design a white dress. For me as a wedding dress designer, this one in particular is one of my current favorites and somebody who has really looked to Taylor Swift as a role model.
[21:10:04]
The moment where she gets to be a bride is my super bowl, says the wedding dress designer. That is my Super Bowl.
OK, let's see what else we've got in here.
For the people that are excited by it.
OK.
You know, and the nerds like me that, like, cannot wait to see what dress she goes with. At best, it's going to break the internet. Right. She is somebody who I have repeatedly brought up when people ask, you know, if you could design for any celebrity, who would it be? It would, without a doubt, be Taylor Swift.
This is actually a natural reaction I have. I get excited, and I want to draw it out. Right.
So immediately when I thought of Taylor's first dress, which would be the ceremony dress, I felt like she needed something Shakespearean and Victorian and super accentuating of her stunning silhouette.
I love going into fabric behavior because it can really take on different forms and shapes and express different personalities. Is it something that feels structural and architectural? Is it something that you want it to kind of wrap the body and feel almost like it's this effortless drape? I think she would probably wear this look as a second look for the
cake cutting in the first dance. And then last but not least, I think she needs to rock a mini.
I can tell you for a fact that the bridal industry loves her, loves Taylor Swift, and so it's going to be wonderful for our industry. It's going to be wonderful for people to believe in the possibility of love for themselves, and I hope it just brings about a lot of positive energy.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: With her most recent album, "Life of a Showgirl," we see the happiness and the playfulness kind of come through.
SAGE: Her latest album is obviously a really important one because it seems to be the one that mostly covers her relationship with Travis and that he actually really wants to be in it with her and that it doesn't feel so hard.
ZALESKI: She is opening herself up to happiness and potentially something else as well.
I just want you have a couple kids got the whole block looking like you. We tell the world to leave us the alone and they do. Wow. Got me dreaming about a driveway with a basketball hoop. She's sort of thinking about her own life and what she wants in the future.
GOLDSCHMIDT: You know, for fans that look up to her as this strong, independent woman and think that marriage is somehow going to strip her of those characteristics, I think it's tricky.
CHAMPION: People are, for better or worse, invested in what they think that her life is. Her engagement has just become such a flashpoint. She's getting married to Mr. America, if you will.
And now everyone is coming in saying I want to have. I have something to say. And they're putting their thoughts and their fears on what she should and shouldn't do.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, Travis. Hey, Taylor. Looking amazing.
ANDREA MCDONNELL, PROFESSOR OF COMMUNICATION, PROVIDENCE COLLEGE: A Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce wedding seems to be the kind of pinnacle moment of celebrity culture. You have Taylor Swift, who's been a media icon for decades at this point, and we also have Travis Kelce, who has been a major figure in the football world.
CHAMPION: Travis Kelce is a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs. He plays with arguably one of the best quarterbacks to ever do it, Patrick Mahomes. He's broken so many amazing records.
LEE: And he is a three time super bowl winner.
CHAMPION: When you see him walk in a room, all of your attention will go directly to him and these movie star good looks and this incredible physique. It is very godlike, you know what I mean? You're looking at him and you're thinking, my goodness, look at him.
SAGE: He has always sort of had a bit of a showman's vibe.
CHAMPION: Travis had a reality TV show called Catchy and Kelsey where he is the bachelor and he gets to date and charm and schmooze all of these women.
TRAVIS KELCE, AMERICAN FOOTBALL TIGHT END : This is a great opportunity for me because I've only had a few serious relationships in my past and I am looking to settle down.
CHAMPION: He has a podcast with his brother Jason called New Heights.
KELCE: We are your host. I'm Travis Kelce. This is my big brother, Jason Kelce.
CHAMPION: It meets at the intersection of family, a friend of football, of Midwestness. I'll make up that word which makes that podcast so very popular and so relatable.
KELCE: You know, people keep asking me what it was like to beat my brother in the Super Bowl and it was pretty awkward.
CHAMPION: If they're asking you to host SNL, which he did do in 2023, it's because you have a little bit of all of it. And he's also just completely unafraid of what stardom looks like. But when he started to date Taylor Swift, his celebrity took on a life of its own.
LEE: There is an unbelievable meet cute, as we describe it, between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. In July 2023, as a fan himself, Travis Kelce attended the Eras Tour just like the rest of us. And he had a friendship bracelet with his phone number written on it that he wanted to give to Taylor.
SAGE: He's unsuccessful. And then he tells the story on his podcast the next week that he didn't get to meet her. And he was disappointed. And the way she tells it and told it on New Heights is that they basically had some friends in common.
SWIFT: There was a lot of kind of people whispering in my ear about you and I. Actually, that's not normal. It's not normal. There are people just willing to go to bat for you, be like, you don't understand.
JASON KELCE, AMERICAN FOOTBALL PLAYER: It's very true.
SWIFT: This guy's incredible.
CHAMPION: The ultimate assist is what that's called.
SAGE: They had met behind the scenes first, and then I remember nights where they went out in the city and they were photographed. And from then it was pretty clear that there was some level of interest or commitment.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's been a lot of buzz lately over whether the Chiefs tight end is currently dating Taylor Swift.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The couple that everybody wants to be a couple. And maybe they are.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: It seems all anyone is talking about is Taylor Swift at the game, cheering on the Chiefs' Travis Kelce.
CHAMPION: When she first came to an NFL game to support Travis, I remember so much vitriol being directed towards her because they kept showing her in the stands.
UNIDENIFIED FEMALE: Taylor is in the house.
CHAMPION: I mean, she had her own cutaway cam. What was happening in the NFL realized in real time the Taylor Swift effect. People started paying attention.
SHARO MARCUS, AUTHOR, "THE DRAMA OF CELEBERITY": A lot more little girls have started watching at least one football game.
CHAMPION: She helped grow the sport. And there were noticeable differences in ratings when Taylor Swift attended games.
LEE: Something that really secured them as America's couple was when he won the last super bowl with the Chiefs. She was not only at the game, but she was now on the field celebrating with him.
GOLDSCHMIDT: Since Taylor Swift has joined sort of the NFL world, I think that conservative people have had a hope and dream that this means that Taylor is going to marry into the conservative world.
LAWRENCE: The NFL is traditionally very conservative.
[21:20:02]
CHAMPION: Football is America's sport. Super Bowl Sunday is a rite of passage.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In Los Angeles, the first Super Bowl game puts the Packers against the Chiefs.
CHAMPION: It's a slice of Americana and everything that is supposed to fit into that idea feels very conservative.
LAWRENCE: Some teams owned by very conservative, not just Trump supporters, but people that have given him money.
CHAMPION: You think of Colin Kaepernick. That's the most obvious example of the football world being extremely conservative.
LAWRENCE: For a lot of people, Travis definitely codes as conservative because the cut of his jib and the way he looks and the fact that he's a big white football player, but we don't know. He's not that open about it.
Conservatives are claiming victory over Taylor Swift now because she has really been a thorn on their side for a long time. She is out as a liberal. She tried to get a Democrat voted in Tennessee.
GOLDSCHMIDT: She put a series of tweets about Black Lives Matter and the Supreme Court, protecting LGBTQ rights and the removal of Confederate monuments in the South. She baked cookies for Joe Biden and posted a picture of her with her Biden cookies.
We even saw her tweet out directly at Donald Trump and say, we will vote you out in November. I mean, I don't think that there is any more strongly worded posts that Taylor could put out.
ZALESKI: After J.D. Vance basically made a snide remark about childless cat ladies.
J.D. VANCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: We're effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made. And so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.
ZELENSKI: Taylor, of course, jumped to the occasion.
CHAMPION: In 2024, on her Instagram, she posts a photo of herself holding a cat and she, in short, says, I'm endorsing Kamala Harris. Taylor Swift. Kiss my ass. J.D. Vance, Childless Cat Lady.
LAWRENCE: So the fact that she ended up with somebody from the NFL feels like, OK, we've lured her over to our side. So we won here.
BRAD WILCOX NATIONAL MARRIAGE PROJECT: One of the exciting things about Taylor Swift getting married is that it would give a pop cultural push to marriage and family life that I think we are long overdue for.
SUZANNE KAHN, AUTHOR, "DIVORCE, AMERICAN STYLE": Marriage rates have fallen really dramatically.
WILCOX: We are basically on the verge of having record shares of adults not putting a ring on it. And this concerns me. Marriage is the keystone to the American civilization. I think there's no institution that really matters more. The challenge facing us as a country is that marriage and family life have been coded as kind of like a right wing Republican thing and that being single footloose and fancy free kind of flying soul is coded as a left wing or progressive thing.
What we're seeing among young adults aged 25 to 35 is that only a minority of liberals are married, whereas a majority of conservatives in that bracket are married. And so I think having someone like Taylor Swift embrace marriage would give permission for young women on the left to become more open to also embracing marriage.
TASHJIAN: There are many on the right who are characterizing this engagement as a moment for us all to seize upon to show that young women should be getting married.
CHAMPION: Ben Shapiro commented on her getting married, saying more single people should do this. Charlie Kirk also mentioned that perhaps this would change her political leanings.
CHARLIE KIRK, POLITICAL ACTIVIST: Taylor Swift might go from a cat lady to a J.D. Vance supporter. And I think we should see celebrate that.
WILCOX: What we're seeing in the research is that there's a growing gap in happiness between married Americans and unmarried Americans. Too many Americans are pursuing that stellar education, that perfect career, that opportunity to be in the bright lights. And what they're missing is that cultivating a marriage mindset would be more likely to actually make them happy because it's these social ties that are more important.
LAWRENCE: The narrative on the other side from the liberals in terms of Taylor Swift is she's not somebody that's going to stop making music and be waiting for him to come home and just making his dinner.
ABRAHAM: She's getting married at the peak of her career. She'll be at least 36 years old. And her wedding is seen as more of a capstone relationship instead of a cornerstone relationship.
KAHN: Here's a marriage with a completely empowered woman who is far out earning her future husband.
TASHJIAN: She's someone who suggested having a career, taking time to get to know yourself, taking time to get to know your partner and what kind of partner you want is really the way to find happiness.
[21:25:05]
SAGE: I think it's interesting how Taylor has sort of become almost like a mirror ball, you could say, for the different ideologies or ways of looking at things that different groups in America have.
MARCUS: How people are reacting just reinforces for me that we can make any story we want stick and from a publicity celebrity point of view, everybody knows that all that matters is that you keep the conversation going and you keep them in the spotlight.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:30:16]
MCDONNELL: It's not just Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. We've always been interested in celebrity weddings and I think that obsession has grown overtime.
MARCUS: We like seeing them be gods and goddesses and have these celebrations on an epic scale. We like that peek behind the curtain. We like the sense of being able to be intimate with people that we're actually somewhat at a distance from. We like being able to gossip.
LAWRENCE: It's a way that we can connect with each other.
MARCUS: And this becomes profitable. MCDONNELL: Some of the earliest celebrity emerge from the Hollywood
studio system, they start to realize that the stars reputations and popularity can actually bring audiences into theater. And this really develops with the early fan magazines like Modern Screen and Photoplay.
So for instance, Mary Pickford, big star at the time, her marriage to Douglas Fairbanks was covered by picture spreads that encouraged the viewing audience to really be a part of that wedding. As we move towards the middle of the 20th century, the celebrities themselves begin to manage their public image or their face, if you will.
Marilyn Monroe is the icon of sexy blonde bombshell. The Happy Birthday Mr. President. Standing over the steam drain with her skirt flying up. Marilyn Monroe understood the need to present herself in a particular way that was marketable.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She married a celebrity. She married Joe DiMaggio who was very famous baseball player for the Yankees.
UNIDENIFIED MALE: Joe DiMaggio slams what looks like a sure homer.
MCDONNELL: They're really coming from these two different realms. We have the sports world which is really more targeted towards a male audience. And then we have this figure of just fascination for the American public.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The prettiest catch of his career. Former Baseball star Joe DiMaggio weds screen star Marilyn Monroe.
MARCUS: He sought her out. Actually shades of Travis and Taylor. They tried to conceal that they were getting married to keep it private.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They kept the nation guessing, then entered wedlock in the unsuspected ceremony at San Francisco City Hall.
MCDONNELL: At the time, celebrity news was not considered something that should be in the news. It wasn't news. But they were bombarded by the press who were just fascinated by this power couple.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A hit with all their fans.
MCDONNELL: By the time we get to the 1950s and 60s, now we see the rise of television.
LAWRENCE: When Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier, this was a big moment in pop culture. Here's this gorgeous Hollywood glamorous woman marrying royalty.
MARCUS: Grace Kelly was under contract with MGM. She had to break that contract to get married. MGM said, OK, we'll let you break the contract if you promise never to act for any other studio and you give us exclusive rights to film your wedding. MGM insisted that the wedding be performed twice once for real and once just for the cameras.
UNIDENTIFDIED MALE: Now, in the eyes of Mother Church as well as of the law Prince Rhaenyra and Princess Grace were man and wife.
MARCUS: So when we see newsreel of that wedding, we are not seeing the actual wedding.
MCDONNELL: She also had her wedding dress designed by an MGM designer. It's not just the dress. It's the cake, it's the bridesmaids, it's the limousine, it's the jewels. It's everything. And it's right there for us. So the kind of fascination grows and also the financial incentive to publicize this content grows.
UNIDENIFIED MALE: Through cheering crowds of hundreds of thousands, Princess Margaret rides to Westminster Abbey on her wedding day.
LAWRENCE: Our royal obsession really started in 1960 when they decided to televise Princess Margaret's wedding to Anthony Armstrong Jones. Which was like, that had never been done before, a royal wedding on television. And that was the moment that were able to see, like, wow, this is celebrity at a level we had no idea. Like, just the opulence and the money. Royal weddings are really pivotal because we're watching history unfold in front of our eyes.
[21:35:02]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, excitement is mounting tonight as Britain gears up for the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana.
UNIDENTIFEID FEMALE: In 1981, when Charles and Diana were getting married, here's the prince who we know has to produce an heir when.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He meets Diana Spencer. She's a teenager.
MARCUS: Diana has so much more of a connection to the little flower children than she does to Charles. So there's this fascination with how does this wedding give us a lifeline to the future of this monarchy that a lot of people at the time were wondering if it would even last.
LAWRENCE: 750 million people worldwide tuned in immediately. Americans were like, okay, we like our celebrities. But these celebrities are really interesting. What she wore was very important to the financial wealth of a lot of fashion brands.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The world gets its first full glimpse of the fairytale princess.
LAWRENCE: And sure enough, she shows up with this giant veil.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Resplendent ivory silk taffeta trimmed with antique lace and a long, long train.
MARCUS: It's more like the dress is wearing the person than a person wearing a dress.
LAWRENCE: And that became not just an iconic moment, but every single wedding designer after that had to bring the veil. MARCUS: They appear on the balcony, they have their quick little kiss,
and then they go off. And you don't really have to think much about how it's going to turn out.
MCDONNELL: And this is what we see. Not only our fascination with these figures, but also the values and hopes and ideals that they symbolize.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With this ring.
KING CHARLES, KING OF UNITED KINGDOM: With this ring.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I thee wed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I thee wed.
MARCUS: My mother literally said to me, I never forgot it. Look at Prince Charles.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Prince Charles has gained the reputation for being somewhat of a playboy.
MARCUS: He went and sowed his wild oats, but she's so pure and virginal. He picked a girl who was clean. I just remember looking at my mother and thinking, you sound insane. Little did she know she didn't really have anything to worry about, really, because I was going to turn into a lesbian.
MCDONNELL: By the time we get to the late 1990s and early 2000s, the expansion of celebrity culture just shoots off like a rocket. So we see the rise of glossy gossip magazines, Us, Weekly, Life and Style, OK. We have relationships like Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, Britney Spears and Kevin Federline. Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey.
MARCUS: Catherine Zeta Jones, Michael Douglas, they sold the rights to cover their wedding for the same amount of money their wedding cost. We're in a whole new world when it comes to celebrity profitability.
MCDONNELL: By the time we get to 2001, we're really starting at the peak of reality TV expansion. We're talking about American Idol, Survivor, Big Brother.
LAWRENCE: Once we fell in love with reality TV next we wanted the wedding. In 2011, E really created this wedding for Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries as if it was a movie.
MCDONNELL: We start to see some establishing shots.
LAWRENCE: Everybody stands up and fixes their hair for camera.
MCDONNELL: We see Kim's sisters looking with anticipation.
LAWRENCE: And basically out of nowhere appears Kim in this Vera Wang dress looking like a princess. And it felt like these were actors. It felt like a set. It's every piece of Hollywood drama on this reality show. This special had 10.5 million viewers and it also really raised the bar for other channels to have to find a way to garner those types of audiences.
But as we know, that fairytale wasn't exactly the fairytale ending.
MARCUS: Celebrities are real people, so you never know how they're supposed to going to turn out. And we like unpredictable stories, whether they're fairy tales or train wrecks.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:43:42]
MCDONNELL: Celebrities both reflect and shape our cultural norms and values, but they can also push the culture in different directions.
KAHN: Certainly seeing celebrities both get married and get divorced shifts what the range of possibilities people see for themselves are.
MCDONNELL: People accept that divorce is simply something that happens, but it didn't used to be the case that was condoned or accepted. But it's fascinating to me how so many celebrities are married, divorced and married, divorced. It seems sometimes almost a revolving door.
KAHN: Prior to the 1960s, divorce was very uncommon. You couldn't get a divorce without a reason. My favorite story about this is that in New York City, one of the reasons you could get a divorce was if you could prove adultery.
So there was an entire industry of people who, if you wanted a divorce for any reason, you could hire to stage an affair. You're hiring a woman to pretend to be having an affair with their husband. You also hire a photographer and so you would like get these photos that then you could use as evidence in your divorce case.
[21:45:00]
In the late 60s, early 70s, there's a big push to shift the legal and economic norms of the country so that women have the same rights as men. Those are the years that the National Organization for Women gets off the ground, that the fight for the ERA, the Equal Rights Amendment gets off the ground. Those are the years that Roe has passed in. And it's a moment where you're just seeing generals really get renegotiated.
1969, California passes the first no fault divorce law, and almost every state follows suit in the next five years. At that point, there's kind of a huge spike in the divorce rate.
WILCOX: The positive, you know, sort of story unfolding is that we're becoming less tolerant of domestic violence and sort of less tolerant of men taking their wives for granted. What I think is bad is that we see kind of what Tom Wolfe describes as kind of like the me decade unfolding in the 70s, and people were often kind of getting divorced for what I would call expressive reasons. I don't really feel like this is a fulfilling relationship. I would like a new chapter to open up in my life. I'm just going to do my own thing. MCDONNELL: Divorce rates peak around 1980. That means that peak is
happening as divorce laws are shifting. What we start to see as we move through the later 20th century and into the 2000s, we see a kind of gender flip happening here where it's not necessarily true that the woman is just a subject in this relationship.
KAHN: The thing that most empowers women is actually being fully economic individuals in the workplace.
ABRAHAM: You see women, you know, rising so quickly in terms of, like, education and earning potential. But if you look at someone like Taylor and Travis, I think Taylor is like a really good example of how you can become the best version of yourself with someone, and they can even help you become a better version of yourself.
PAIGE: I would say the number one thing that draws me to Taylor is her work ethic. There are people that work really hard, and then there are people that work really smart. Taylor is both. Something that I kind of attribute to her is that in my journey as a designer, I've recognized how important it is to keep throwing up numbers, to keep putting the reps in. To be one of the best of the industry only comes through work ethic and continuous repetition and continually starting over when you have to.
This particular lace work took over three months just to get the placement right.
I had signed a contract when I was 25 years old without a lawyer, and it was an employment contract in which I gave the right for my name to be trademarked. I was going to be headlining my own collection. This is a dream I've had since my foot could reach a sewing pedal. So I got right to work and did everything I could to help grow this brand. I got to be on say yes to the dress.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hayley, what are you doing here after the show yesterday?
PAIGE: I have a bride coming in today for a very special fitting.
About nine years in, I was coming to the end of my contract, so it was time to renegotiate. So that led to something that was very blindsiding. I was sued in federal court, and within a matter of 24 hours, I lost the ability to use my own birth name in any business or commerce, or even to publicly identify because of the extension of my personhood with the brand itself.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Taylor Swift's music catalog has been sold, and this mega deal is creating some bad blood.
PAIGE: Swift's early music catalog was sold to a company owned by Braun in a deal worth about $300 million. She called it a worst case scenario watching her fight for her masters. This overlapped my time period of not being allowed to use my own name, not being allowed to practice my chosen trade.
When I watched her kind of champion her own narrative, I think one of the most important aspects or mindset shifts for me was owning my story. When an opportunity came for a settlement, it was the first time I felt like I was on the offense.
[21:50:00]
And so in going through my journey and getting this opportunity to buy it all back, it was surreal. And it was also this true moment of autonomy and ownership and beauty being returned.
UNIDENIFIED FEMALE: A years long fight has come to an end for Taylor Swift. She says she now owns her entire music catalog.
PAIGE: Anytime you're putting something out there's going to be negativity. But ultimately there are certain things you just can't control. And so I think with their wedding, they're going to create a very protective environment. She's had a huge career and here she is getting a moment to celebrate and fall in love and do the life thing.
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TASHJIAN: Every woman has an idea of what her wedding day would look like. And this is probably the first moment where Taylor Swift is doing something that every other American woman has thought about.
PAIGE: I think that shift makes her all the more relatable.
CHAMPION: This is probably the first time in her career where she really, truly just wants to be in love and ride off into the sunset at least for now.
LAWRENCE: Taylor and Travis are the King and Queen of America right now. We want to know what the, what royalty is up to.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's hundreds of TikToks devoted to just the location where they're getting married.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's speculation right now that Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift are going to get married in Watch Hill, Rhode Island.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She is the secret keeper, the biggest secret keeper of all. Like she is queen Easter egg.
TASHJIAN: It will be interesting to see how Taylor manages to make this day feel extraordinary. Taylor has a number of moments already under her belt that are the best day of her life. So how will she telegraph to us that this is a really significant day for her?
SWIFT: You're making me feel excellent right now.
SAGE: She said she wants to have a huge wedding. So if I were her, I'd probably do a more intimate and then a, you know, an everyone wedding. But for her, a 700 person wedding might feel very small compared to what she's used to. CHAMPION: She's going to give her girlies the fantasy that they want,
but she's going to let him do the dude thing because that's her too. She makes it clear I like to have a good time.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If I had to guess who would be in her bridal party, I mean, Selena Gomez obviously is the first person that comes to mind.
LEE: Gigi Hadid is another one who's been in her circle for a long time.
ABRAHAM: Taylor has a group of really authentic friends. I know she has a very close friend from high school, Abigail.
SAGE: Abigail.
ABARHAM: Of course you know her name.
SAGE: There's also the other friend who's like her kind of behind the scenes friend, Ashley Avignon. She'll probably be one.
LEE: In terms of who she wears. That is the question of the year actually.
TASHJIAN: I think when you're choosing a wedding dress, you are thinking a lot about how the person you are marrying sees you. What is it that person values and admires about you? And how can this clipping and sewing of fabric communicate that to this person?
Now, of course, if you are a famous person, the pressure is heightened because who you are is something that many, many people have an opinion about.
LEE: Because she is considered American royalty, there's a very short list of names who are able to match her needs. Ralph Lauren is one.
TASHJIAN: She's very invested in mythologizing herself and Ralph Lauren is a brand and a designer that is all about the mythology of America. However, she also really likes less expected names like Vivienne Westwood.
HELMSTETTER: I actually think her wedding style will emulate how she chooses to project herself in fashion design, which is really approachable.
PAIGE: I personally have watched her through the years and her fashion choices. Some of my favorites, Oscar de la Renta. For her Eras' premiere, I loved the laser cut floral. I also loved her VMAs look with again, Oscar de la Renta, which was a draped one crystal look. More recently, I loved the Weiderhoff she wore. It was this really beautiful oval, sculptured neckline.
She's aware that she puts on an amazing show and that her clothing is a part of that.
She's had ample moments to dress for the occasion. And here she is stepping into forever and committing to somebody for the rest of her life. And so I do think she is going to approach it a bit differently.
ZALESKI: Some people are worried that because Taylor has found love, her songs aren't going to be as compelling because they're all going to be happy now. Nothing could be further from the truth.
SAGE: I think it might be new for her to speak vulnerably about things that are not her relationship going wrong. And I think being honest in that is something that I would be really excited to hear.
PAIGE: So much of Taylor's art has imitated her life. What's really poetic about her now saying yes to a man and saying yes to forever is that it's life imitating art.
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And now this is really a moment where she is not just singing a love song, she's actually getting to live it out.
