Imagine getting an invitation to Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s any-minute-now fabulous wedding – the closest thing America has to a royal wedding – and first thing, you check the fine print. See one detail that makes you think, “This for real? Bugger it, nah, not going.”
The detail? No plus-ones. No ring, no bring, as Queen Elizabeth II famously insisted for her own actually-royal guest lists.
The dummy was reportedly spat by one Swift invitee who shared the no plus-one detail, feeling that her single status means she was penalised by not being able to bring a date. That’s according to tabloid stories which have since prompted global debate.
“What am I supposed to do? Go alone?” the unnamed guest told the Daily Mail. “I don’t want to go by myself and I am not sure I will know too many people. I mean, sorry, I am not friends with Gigi and Bella Hadid.”
This griping guest didn’t reveal their name so we can’t hold them directly to account for being scared to front up solo to a wedding and the Hadids. But the issue raised is a doozy for anyone who’s ever planned a wedding.
Tonnes of you who already put a ring on it will know this is a task with more inbuilt booby traps than Home Alone. Especially if your parents paid for the wedding and thus had carte blanche to invite Terry from the office – Terry! – and couples they met through Rotary.
Invite kids but not dates? Problem. Dates but not kids? Problem. Cousins but not colleagues? Problem.
How did you handle it? Is it a stitch-up to ban plus-ones? Or is Taylor saying what we’ve all thought when hunched over lists of names, worried about blowouts and family politics?
Given my dreamboat husband, I plan never to wed again. But if I did, I’d enact a draconian “No Randoms” policy that would apply to anyone not married, engaged or living with someone I invited.
Two figs would not be given for guests’ feelings. Guess what? Not your wedding. And being deemed lovely or vital enough to be invited to one is no small thing. See that as the honour it is and cut the whingeing.
No bride or groom wants to spin around giddily after their first kiss and catch the eye of a stranger. The only people you want jig-jogging behind you in the conga line or hogging the finger food are official loved ones.
The rumoured July 3 wedding of Taylor and Travis – gee, that’s going to look good on the hand-painted welcome board outside the venue – will have true cultural impact. Prince William is said to have angled to get the call-up.
Which means our poor old single female guest, surely a close friend, has possibly learned nothing from Taylor’s own inspiring example. Even babies know her whole MO is about single women finding power.
Which is perhaps the funniest part of this guestzilla saga.
Swift’s spent two decades writing songs about boundaries, loyalty and deciding who gets access to her life. Yet when she flexes those boundaries at her wedding – where they don’t want the security nightmare and emotional weirdness of Hinge matches near the top table – people start behaving as if they’ve been denied an entitlement.
So yeah, banging on about not being able to take a date-slash-comfort-blanket to a fabulous wedding is missing the point in the Swift world.
Not to mention queering your own pitch, because weddings are the best place to find love. Everyone’s trolleyed, wearing good shoes, feeling sentimental and hopeful and yelling the words to Come on Eileen.
That’s a heady cocktail to spark connection. Especially when Taylor Swift herself is laying on a smorgasbord of rich and famous spunks. Rock up by yourself, tell Bella her hair looks nice, shoot the lights out and score your own gym teacher. Go pick out a white dress.
Single female guest, if you’re real, you’re lame. But you’ve also done us a favour.
If the world’s most influential bride-to-be can hold the line on plus-ones, maybe the rest of us finally can too. Obligation invite, you’ve gone out of style.
Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.
The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.
