Writes People’s Erin Hill:
For two years, their romance has felt like a modern fairytale, unfolding with the kind of public fascination usually reserved for Buckingham Palace balconies and Westminster Abbey aisles. Now, with an engagement ring in play (designed by Travis!), it’s not a stretch to say: this might be the closest thing America gets to a royal wedding. And maybe, just maybe, that’s exactly what we need right now. …
America doesn’t have a monarchy, but Meghan’s royal wedding to Harry proved how deeply we crave the pageantry. And the marriage of music’s reigning queen to football’s most charismatic star has the potential to deliver the pomp and unity of a royal wedding — without the tiaras, but with just as much sparkle.
The Daily Beast’s Kevin Fallon can’t wait for it to blot out the sun:
Congrats to Taylor and Travis on their love and partnership, or whatever. But this has long not been about them. We need this.
We need the escapism, the permission to feel emotional over the engagement between two people we have never met. We need the parasocial excitement, as if we’re a part of their close circle of love and community that this union will bless.
We need the cheesiness of the photo shoot in that Secret Garden fever-dream set, and of Taylor’s gloriously corny caption. We need the fantasy and the glamor of knowing how absolutely filthy rich and fabulously famous these people are, so we can daydream about their lavish wedding and ensuing married life.
And we need all of this to be as absolutely basic as everything about this all has become in order to relate. So millennial is Taylor Swift that, despite being the biggest star in the world marrying one of the most successful athletes in modern times, she still wants to have a lil’ engagement photo shoot and post it on her Insta with a perfunctory “did at thing!” caption. …
This is our royal wedding. This is our Will and Kate, our Harry and Meghan. The media will be insatiable in its coverage of it. Social media will be a circus, surely unable to wrangle its clowns into the tent. There will be celebration and mockery—and I think that’s all kind of fun.
