There are plenty of reasonable questions to ask in the nuclear aftermath of Taylor Swift announcing her engagement to Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Is the ring supposed to be shaped like a football, or is it just ludicrously huge? What’s with all the foliage? How will this affect Travis’s fantasy production this season? Should I really have passed on him for Fantasy Football because of age?
But the most intriguing question is logistical: What city is going to host the wedding of the decade?
Smart money should point to cities central to Taylor lore: New York, London, Nashville, or that Rhode Island mansion where she threw a bunch of parties and was the subject of “The Last Great American Dynasty.” (I hear The Gilded Age really popped this summer.) It could even be her actual hometown of Reading, Pennsylvania. Travis brings his own claims, too, between his Ohio roots and Kansas City legacy, since that’s where he has spent his entire career. But tilting the scales toward him doesn’t feel very on brand for Taylor. He’s an Über-wife guy in waiting! Los Angeles, as well, is technically an option, but a California wedding just feels so generic, and it certainly lacks the mythological zhuzh this particular union clearly demands.
But why limit the possible options to Swift-Kelce lore when you have the entire country available? After all, this decision is really about us, the people. Why shouldn’t we get to play a part in choosing the site of the century’s most scrutinized nuptials? And why not televise it?
We’ve got some templates to draw from. Remember when the Sundance Film Festival went hunting for a new host city? Over 100 cities reportedly offered themselves up through a formal bidding process, and the finalists that emerged were an eclectic bunch: Atlanta, Boulder, Cincinnati, Louisville, Santa Fe, plus the existing Park City that newly bundled itself with nearby Salt Lake City. It was an oddly thrilling spectacle, the kind of thing that makes you form strange attachments to cities you’ve never set foot in and wonder about the dark arts of civic self-promotion. Sundance ultimately picked Boulder, which, like, fine. (I would have gone with Cincinnati, but whatever.)
The real missed opportunity was that we didn’t get to watch the process unfold. Picture a prime-time special where mayors and their tourism boards deliver pitches to Taylor and Travis directly, Shark Tank style. “Welcome to Pittsburg! We’ll light the bridges in Eras colors, we’ll make the Steelers dress up, here are some tax breaks.” Reality-show judges could include Taylor and Travis confederates: Tree Paine, Sabrina Carpenter, Chiefs head coach Andy Reid, and Patrick Mahomes. The show would obviously get cross-promoted on Travis’s popular podcast, New Heights, which he hosts with his brother, Jason.
And if it goes well, let’s do Super Bowls, World Cups, the Olympics, G8 summits, and new Top Chef seasons next. These kinds of city-bidding processes are notoriously corrupt to begin with, so such transparency can only be beneficial. This could also be an opportunity for Swift-Kelce to shape policy; given what we know about their politics, one presumes they would swing away from states with anti-LGBQT+ policies, much like Sundance did. Plus, the process could help the Democrats mint new national politicians out of mayors. What better crucible than pitching your city to the most powerful celebrity alive and her football-star fiancé with a high Q rating? A 30-second promo reel could turn a relatively obscure mayor into a household name.
What, all this too dystopian for you? It’s not that much more dystopian than NBC’s upcoming reality show built around Jimmy Fallon’s apparent love for advertising, and it’s significantly less dystopian than Amazon’s very public 2018 search for a second headquarters site that had cities tripping over themselves to offer up tax breaks and incentives. Mayors debase themselves all the time for corporations! This? This would be much less sad and much more fun. Taylor Swift has already trained the masses to treat her life as serialized, participatory entertainment, and we’ve fully bought into the meta-mythmaking. And if Boulder wins again? Well, good for them.
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And it should be televised.
