It seemed too bizarre to be true—Taylor Swift, the biggest pop star of a generation, would be getting married inside a … basketball arena?
Such was the reaction when news first broke that Swift and her NFL fiancé Travis Kelce were to wed at New York City’s iconic Madison Square Garden, a hallowed concert venue and home of the championship-winning Knicks. For Kelce, sure, the choice makes sense; he’s an athlete, after all. But it felt a little strange for Swift, a lifelong lover, a romantic, a billionaire. Of all places, why there?
Ahead of the pair's July 3 nuptials, we set out to understand. On Thursday morning, Sports Illustrated spoke with Larry Walshe of Larry Walshe Studios, a luxury floral and event design firm whose past celebrity clients include A-listers like Adele and Rihanna. Although Walshe and his team were not involved in Taylor and Travis’s event, he shared with us his expert take on the ceremony’s unexpected location, as well as the unique difficulties of taking on clients of this caliber.
For what it’s worth, he quite likes the idea of MSG as a wedding venue. And for good reason, at that.
This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Sports Illustrated: First and foremost, how difficult is it to take on a client of this size? Do you do anything differently in this case?
Larry Walshe: In terms of the scale, ultimately what we’re really working with [in these scenarios] is the fact that it’s no longer one event; it’s multiple days. It’s usually two to three [days]. It’s usually some version of a rehearsal dinner, wedding day celebrations, day after [party]. Then, within there, you’re often now looking at the fact that it’s no longer usually in the same space; it’s either in different spaces around an estate at the closest, or it’s in multiple destinations. So you’re usually doing one thing in one place, then traveling somewhere else to another, then traveling somewhere else to another.
So within that, you’re no longer working, let’s say, on a church wedding and then going to a lovely little reception in a marquee or in a ballroom. You’re now essentially building a small village for people.
SI:Is there a golden rule for dealing with A-listers, or are there things you do a little differently to accommodate that person in the process?
LW: I think there are different considerations that naturally come in. For example, security … is of importance [for high-profile clients]. If you’re working with exactly the same project, but for somebody else who isn’t in the public eye, [security] is not as much of a concern. I believe that everybody has, in that moment, the responsibility to give that person their celebration. If they choose to put that into the public domain, that’s absolutely up to them, but it should be their choice, not ours.
So, for example, those considerations become ever more present when you're dealing with [A-listers]. In planning stages, for us, it's an unwritten rule. I don’t have to have signed an NDA to never speak a word about it. It’s just the world that I live in.
But equally, we will go into that where we’ll use code names for our clients. So those in our core management team will know what the project is actually about, but we’ll disseminate information to people on a need-to-know basis, so that you’re eliminating the likelihood of somebody accidentally slipping up and forgetting that they can’t talk about something. At each turn, you're ultimately giving that client the opportunity to have their day the way that they want it.
SI: I feel like I know the answer, but would you ever turn down an event for being almost toohigh-profile or complicated?
LW: No, I wouldn’t turn down a project for that reason. If you weren’t a nice person, I would turn it down.
SI: But not logistically speaking.
LW: Logistically, I love a challenge, so unfortunately, the more difficult that you make it or the more horrible those variables are, the more likely I am to say yes. [Laughs]
SI: Circling back to our big nuptials this weekend. With your design-minded brain, how would you begin to decorate or transform Madison Square Garden into a wedding venue?
LW: Well, the thing that I like about Madison Square Garden as a wedding venue is the fact that you have infrastructure. So already, I’ve got a lot of ceiling rigging opportunities. I’ve got a lot of tech that’s already in the ceiling, things that are out of the way that I could totally make use of. So the designer in me, in that regard, is really quite happy. I’ve got massively high ceilings; I could do something absolutely dramatic. But of course, my bigger challenge is the fact that I have a space that I need to neutralize, romanticize and develop into something that feels wedding appropriate.
[At MSG], I would be using the world’s greatest amount of drapery and probably have something attached to the very ceiling, falling down to tent the surrounding [area] and essentially create that softer, more romanticized environment. Just to neutralize and get rid of what is the stadium. From there, I would then start adding, embellishing and working into whatever style and spirit of design was being looked for.
From a practical perspective—and I heard this being thrown around, I don’t know if there's truth in it, but there very well could be—[the venue] was originally selected partly for its ability to control security. And I do agree with that. For that, it’s a very, very sensible choice. [Security] is much harder to control [for] somebody of this level of interest … if you were to have picked, I don’t know, a beautiful piece of land in the countryside. It’s so open, it’s so exposed, and people are so hungry for that story, there really isn't any way of controlling it. [MSG] does allow you to isolate, show only the guests inside what you want to show them, and maintain that element of privacy.
SI:There is another rumor that she wants the inside of the arena to look like a castle. Do you think that would be possible?
LW: Let’s find out if I’m right. I secretly, in the back of my mind, feel like she will have leaned on some of her concert development team for some of that scenic build-out. … She has all the creativity enabled around her to bring that kind of fantasy to life. If that’s where she’s going with it, she has got a space, which—it doesn’t have a view—but after that, it’s got so many possibilities.
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BRIGID KENNEDY
Brigid Kennedy is a contributor to the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI in November 2024, she covered political news, sporting news and culture at TheWeek.com before moving to Livingetc, an interior design magazine. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, dual majoring in television, radio and film (from the Newhouse School of Public Communications) and marketing managment (from the Whitman School of Management). Offline, she enjoys going to the movies, reading and watching the Steelers.
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