“The wedding was charming, if a little gauche,” Taylor Swift once sang, foreshadowing the pop megastar’s own wedding last week to Kansas City Chiefs football player Travis Kelce in New York City, at one of the most unexpected venues: Madison Square Garden
, better known as home of the newest NBA champions, the New York Knicks.
However you feel about the two-day spectacle, it took over the city leading up to the Fourth of July holiday weekend, and people (especially Swifties) want to know what went on inside the arena walls. Details are scarce, as vendors signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). That means they can’t talk on the record about the wedding details, EW confirmed with one unnamed NYC restaurant.
Here’s what we know about the wedding, at least when it comes to its overlap with New York City’s dining scene.
The couple donated to many food nonprofits in NYC and the country
Before the wedding, Swift and Kelce donated $1 million to both NYC food rescue organization City Harvest and soup kitchen/food pantry network Food Bank for NYC, among their overall $26 million in donations to charities across the country.
What was served at the wedding
Ahead of the wedding festivities, the eagle-eyed reporters at Page Six watched trucks load food shipments into MSG on Wednesday, July 1. There were Sysco boxes full of everything from chicken, lobster sourced from Quebec, onion rings, and whole milk.
People reported that the wedding reception wasn’t a seated dinner, and there were “Italian dishes, sushi, and fancy fare, including caviar served on chicken nuggets.” (Coqodaq, was that y’all?)
Later that evening, US Weekly reported seeing a Jeep from East Village sandwich shop Danny & Coop’s Cheesesteaks outside the venue. It’s, again, co-owned by wedding guest Bradley Cooper. Eater has reached out for more information.
Around the same time, US Weekly also reported seeing a car from Manhattan pizzeria Mama’s Too (which does have a West Village location, one of Swift’s go-to neighborhoods). Over Instagram direct message, a staffer tells Eater that the business signed an NDA but that “a lot of pizza was served.”
A favorite Swift restaurant served the rehearsal dinner
It appears that one of Swift’s go-to NYC spots, Italian restaurant Sartiano’s inside the Mercer Hotel, served the wedding rehearsal dinner on Thursday, July 2, as reported by Page Six. The New York Times reports that the family-style menu included “meatballs, caviar cannoli, stuffed paccheri pasta, spaghetti arrabiata, and focaccia with whipped ricotta.” Founder and restaurateur Scott Sartiano also attended the wedding. Eater has reached out for more information.
Food celebrity guests
Of the 100-guest rehearsal dinner and 1,000-person wedding, guests in and around the food world included:
- Food writer and cookbook author Alison Roman (per E Online)
- British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and his wife, Jools Oliver (per People)
- Selena + Chef host Selena Gomez and food fan and cookbook author Benny Blanco (per People)
- Queer Eye‘s Antoni Porowski (per the Clip Out)
- Actor, director, and co-owner of East Village sandwich shop Danny & Coop’s Cheesesteaks Bradley Cooper (per GQ)
Very late-night leftover sweets
Around 2:30 a.m. on Saturday, July 4, the New York Times reports that a van with the name SP Bakery drove by and stopped to give a box of presumably leftover wedding Danishes to the crowd of fans (including the person recording the video who shouts “I don’t care, it’s Taylor Swift food”), delivered from the van to the crowd via a police officer. International Delights LLC commented on one of the videos, noting it was one of their brands,Delices and Co., and its apple feuilletée Danish — the box did have the Delices logo on it. Eater has reached out for more information.
