The Booming Industry Keeping Taylor Swift's Wedding a Secret

**Jessica Mendoza** (0:05)
This 4th of July weekend, journalists across the country are waiting for the answer to a major cultural question. Is Taylor Swift's love story entering a new era?

**SPEAKER_3** (0:21)
Let's talk about the wedding. Nobody can stop talking about. Is it happening this weekend at Madison Square Garden?

**Chavie Lieber** (0:28)
I mean, it has consumed my algorithm.

**Jessica Mendoza** (0:32)
That's our colleague, Chavie Lieber.

**Chavie Lieber** (0:34)
The Swifties and the numerologists and the astrologists, I mean, people have pretty much lost their minds over all the speculation about this date.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:43)
So Taylor and Travis are definitely getting married this weekend.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:46)
I mean, why would you get married on a Mars-Jurnus conjunction?

**SPEAKER_5** (0:49)
First off, I think it's totally a smokescreen.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:51)
Like, this doesn't sound very Taylor.

**Jessica Mendoza** (0:53)
This Madison Square Garden wedding, yes, it's tacky. No shade.
Even the mayor of New York City hinted something about it.

**SPEAKER_6** (1:01)
With July 4th, America 250, Taylor Swift's wedding all happening at the same time.

**Jessica Mendoza** (1:06)
Even though the US is celebrating 250 years of independence, we still have American royalty. Chavie is a resident expert on this privileged population.

**Chavie Lieber** (1:18)
Celebrities, influencers, hot people, I think those are our American royalty today.

**Jessica Mendoza** (1:24)
Hot people.

**Chavie Lieber** (1:26)
Look, I'm just being real.

**Jessica Mendoza** (1:27)
I love that. For this potentially major event, the wedding of Taylor Swift and NFL player Travis Kelce this weekend, Chavie has been on top of the reporting as well as the rumor mill.

**Chavie Lieber** (1:39)
There's just been nonstop speculation. I mean, basically every publication that covers fashion and beauty has all these guessings like, who is she going to wear? What bridal brand is she going to wear? Will she wear this shade of red lipstick or that shade of red lipstick?

**Jessica Mendoza** (1:53)
But all that speculation around this possibly monumental cultural event, is just that, speculation. Which, given how soon it might happen, takes an equally monumental effort to keep under wraps.

**Chavie Lieber** (2:07)
For a celebrity of this scale and an event of this size, they're working really hard to make sure everything is ironclad and that no information gets leaked out.

**Jessica Mendoza** (2:16)
Because it turns out, keeping a celebrity wedding free from serious leaks is big business. There's an entire industry dedicated to this very thing.
How would you describe the links that celebrities and high-profile people and hot people today are going to try to keep their wedding secret?

**Chavie Lieber** (2:36)
The best comparison I would make is warfare, essentially. Everything from really high-end technology to boots on the ground, to military dogs, to fake venues and fake names, they're pulling out all the stops to make sure that the wedding is private and secret.

**Jessica Mendoza** (3:01)
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Thursday, July 2nd.
Coming up on the show, inside the lucrative wedding security industrial complex.

**SPEAKER_7** (3:28)
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**Jessica Mendoza** (4:30)
Three years ago, one of Taylor Swift's closest collaborators, music producer Jack Antonoff, got married.

**SPEAKER_5** (4:36)
Causing chaos as she arrived for the wedding of music producer Jack Antonoff and actress Margaret Qualley.

**Jessica Mendoza** (4:42)
Details of the event leaked, along with the rumor that Swift herself was attending, and fans stormed the streets outside the venue.

**SPEAKER_5** (4:50)
A massive crowd of her fans filling every blank space outside the event.

**Jessica Mendoza** (4:56)
Again, this was just Taylor Swift's producer's wedding, and police had to intervene. They had to close roads. It was, in a word, chaos.
Javi says, this is the kind of disruption that many high-profile people want to avoid on their wedding day. How are the goals of weddings different for celebrities and extremely rich people? What are the concerns that they have that us regular people don't? For sure.