The US turns 250 and Taylor Swift gets married. I think we all know which is a bigger deal | Marina Hyde

. UK edition

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce kiss after the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers in the NFL Super Bowl, Las Vegas, 11 February 2024.
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce kiss after the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers in the NFL Super Bowl, Las Vegas, 11 February 2024. Photograph: John Locher/AP

The cultural phenomenon is beginning her latest era in a castle built inside Madison Square Garden. It’s the perfect celebration for our post-privacy age, says Guardian columnist Marina Hyde

It is a cast-iron rule of the comments-section era that there is absolutely no celebrity you can write about without some person dialling in to post a contemptuous: “Who?” Did I say some person? Forgive me: I think I might have meant some guy. Strangely, you never see a “who?” below articles about sport, as though the posters have somehow grasped that ostentatiously announcing that they have precisely no idea about Ousmane Dembélé is not some status-symbol flex, and could secure them quite a painful wedgie.

I am looking forward to catching my first “who?” about Taylor Swift on the occasion of her wedding to Travis Kelce, which is taking place – perhaps you’ve heard? – in New York today. Because of course Miss Americana and her NFL star fiance are getting married over the Fourth of July weekend. And not just any Fourth of July, but the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson. (I know: who?)

In truth, though, Swift might be the one female star to have transcended the performative pretence of ignorance. Think of her as a who-nicorn. Not having heard of her is a bit like not having heard of a G7 country. During her unprecedented, record-breaking Eras tour a couple of years ago, Taylor moved beyond the status of mere pop star and began to be perceived as a travelling mercantile city-state. It seems entirely appropriate to read reports that her and Travis’s wedding organisers have built a castle within Madison Square Garden (venue for at least part of the marital celebrations). I’d like to think of this temporary structure less along the lines of a Disneyfied fairytale castle and more like some unconquerable medieval stronghold. Obviously, it will be dismantled after the party – and yet, also obviously, it is basically Mont-Saint-Michel. Entirely undefeated throughout the hundred years war. This castle will take all comers.

Indeed, when news broke last month that Madison Square Garden might be the couple’s wedding venue, it seemed hard to believe, and slightly like getting married at the office – yet somehow, within the rules of the world Swift has created for herself, also the most normal thing in the world. It’s really perfect for the bride who probably cares mildly about placename calligraphers and the difference between warm white and ivory, but ultimately has to optimise for the no-fly zone.

Inevitably, the nuptials have generated marginally more theories and conspiracy theories than the Kennedy assassination. No artist has turned fandom into sleuthing quite so intensely as Swift, who can’t drop a napkin let alone a lyric without forcing millions of people to adapt Metternich on the death of Talleyrand. Yes, but what did she mean by that? It is fitting, then, that her wedding arrangements should be the apotheosis of all this. But of course they contain decoys. How could this possibly be a Swiftian event without playful references, clues, Easter eggs and misdirections dropped for fans to decode? And, as always with Swift, that tension between revealing and teasing has been sublimated into a frenzy of coverage that is orders of magnitude greater than it would have been had the happy couple simply given a brief outline of proceedings and asked in vain for privacy.

Then again, perhaps their own post-privacy version of privacy is what they have managed to achieve, given the lack of clarity as to what precisely is under way in New York, bar yet more road closures. It involves huge numbers of people working round the clock, yet remains at the level of state secret. If the Manhattan Project did weddings etc.

Even at time of writing, it is not remotely clear what has or hasn’t been happening – whether a smaller private wedding had taken place in advance and this was all a post-hoc celebration, whether the size of the venue meant some superfans would be admitted for a glimpse, whether – and this is a big plotline – heavily oxidised former BFF Blake Lively would be a bridesmaid, or even attending at all. The arrangements have been an incredibly impressive feat of information control given this is an event which, by all accounts, involves multiple A-list attenders, multiple sub-events and is taking place in the very centre of Manhattan. To put that into perspective, this celebrity wedding is officially way more secure than last year’s US operation to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen, in advance of which you might recall a journalist was added to the top-level group chat by the then national security adviser. So amateur. Taylor would never.

Ultimately, though they may be on the outside and not looking in, Swift will find a way to make this feel like one for the fans. As we know, her extraordinary success is being a woman who exists in a category of one, yet who nonetheless feels like the most relatable person on the planet for her vast audience.

And, as a serial storyteller, Swift has had an incredible narrative run, of the like sustained in the modern era only by the Marvel Cinematic Universe (now largely run aground) and the Maga movement (please God etc). Her wedding gives her fans the satisfying narrative conclusion that they desire. Or which, in the case of the fandom’s more lunatic fringes, they believe that they are entitled to. Hey, she’s a people pleaser. From the early stages of her career, Swift has cast herself as the heroine in her romantic adventures and misadventures – and like all great romantic comedies, from Shakespeare to the multiplex, this one is culminating in marriage. I’m sure she’d discourage anyone from pigeonholing this weekend as a happy ending – so let’s call it her new beginning era instead.