Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s Madison Square Garden wedding happened five days ago and I feel like the subject is already completely exhausted. It’s like: give us photos or shut up about it. Still, people enjoy talking about who was there, who didn’t turn up and who left early. Taylor and Travis invited Steven J. Demetriou, executive chairman of Amentum Services, who operates ICE detention centers which are full of massive humanitarian crises. A big YIKES. Additionally, several celebrities skipped, including: Jack Antonoff’s wife Margaret Qualley, Robert Pattinson, Ryan Seacrest and Charles Barkley. Barkley explained why he decided to not bother with any of it.
Charles Barkley revealed that he turned down an invitation to attend Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift’s New York City wedding.
“I don’t go to weddings and funerals,” the NBA legend said on the “Unfiltered With Ricky Bo & Bill Colarulo” podcast Tuesday.
“I did get an invite, and I politely declined. Because I thought it was gonna be a crap show,” he added. “I love Travis and Jason [Kelce]. I’ve only met Taylor one time. But yeah, I did get an invite but I said, ‘Hey, that’s just too much.’”
The “Inside the NBA” host said he just wants to “hang out and play golf” in his spare time.
“I don’t wanna dress up and all that other stuff,” he said. “But I appreciate the invitation; it was pretty special.”
Barkley isn’t the only celebrity who opted to skip the Kansas City Chiefs star and the “Bad Blood” singer’s big day.
On Monday, Ryan Seacrest revealed that he actually confirmed to attend the ceremony and didn’t go.
“I RSVP’d to go, and then Disney hired me to do the Fourth of July 250 special on the 3rd and the 4th,” the “American Idol” host explained on his radio show. “So, I had to cancel.”
Wow, Barkley is heroic. It never occurred to me to just say “I don’t go to weddings and funerals.” Like, make that rule for yourself, people. I’m not celebrating your wedding or your life, call me if you want to golf though. I love this comment too: “I thought it was gonna be a crap show.” I think a lot of people probably thought the same – like, oh, this is going to be tacky as hell. But that’s why so many of them came, to see what a mess it was.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
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- ELMONT, NEW YORK, USA – SEPTEMBER 11: Taylor Swift wearing Dior arrives at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards held at UBS Arena on September 11, 2024 in Elmont, New York, United States.,Image: 907008499, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Taylor Swift, Credit line: Xavier Collin / Image Press Agency / Avalon
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- Kansas City Chiefs media day during Super Bowl LIX, New Orleans, LA, USA – 03 Feb 2025 Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce87 talks to the media. New Orleans LA USA, UK NEWSPAPERS OUT Copyright: xx,Image: 960018214, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: imago is entitled to issue a simple usage license at the time of provision. Personality and trademark rights as well as copyright laws regarding art-works shown must be observed. Commercial use at your own risk., Model Release: no, Credit line: IMAGO/Avalon
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- Grammy winner spending time in New York with her fiance spotted stepping out for dinner at Or’esh restaurant in New York City. Swift wore a 85 Doen Ashlynn midi dress with floral prints, while Kelce paired a floral-splashed Marni shirt with pinstriped pants Featuring: Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce Where: New York, New York, United States When: 15 May 2026 Credit: INSTARimages
Hilarious response
I know. I wish he’d just left it at that. But I know people, especially elderly, who are like “not another wedding.” So it’s a thing.
Wow. Pretty rude IMO. Was it really necessary to say anything besides he doesn’t do funerals and weddings? He sounds like the kind of guy you wouldn’t want at your wedding ( or funeral) anyway. No big loss for T&T.
I thought it was rude, too.
No, it wasn’t rude as hell. We all have the right to an opinion. What is this nonsense you wouldn’t want him at your wedding or funeral. What in the passive aggressive hell is this? He already said he wouldn’t come didn’t he? It’s a rule of thumb. Anyway he’s earned the right to speak his mind, be a curmudgeon in his old age. He is a legend! A basketball legend with a legacy that won’t be forgotten. Anyone with a braincell heard msg and thought this is going to be a crap show, he did not mean it in a negative way. All these 1000 people, musicians, the youth shudder…he doesn’t know them and he doesn’t care. He’s in his old man era and he doesn’t care about your feefees.
Hubby and I had several men say the same when we got married, I didn’t really think anything of it.
I don’t think it was rude. He was on a podcast with the ostensible goal of conversation. So what’s this nonsense about “Was it really necessary to say anything besides he doesn’t do funerals and weddings?”
He was on a podcast with the ostensible goal of conversation. And he also said some nice things: “I did get an invite, and I politely declined…I love Travis and Jason [Kelce]. I’ve only met Taylor one time. But yeah, I did get an invite but I said, ‘Hey, that’s just too much’…But I appreciate the invitation; it was pretty special.”
Ooh, I just realized that I said something that wasn’t “really necessary.” But I think this website encourages conversation. So I’ll leave it at that.
I think he was just saying what most of us were thinking. I assumed she’d have an elegant affair in some castle somewhere, but when details started coming out I was ….confused by the spectacle. It certainly wasn’t what I was expecting haha.
That said, I would have probably gone because I’d be too curious not to see what’s happening. But I”m also nosy. However, I’m also not a celebrity. He’s probably used to seeing tacky spectacles, and it would be boring for him. But not for me haha.
I don’t understand why people expected a mess. Taylor is not messy with what she presents to the world- literally everything she does has intention and meaning behind it. The venue was a head scratcher, until the benefits were explained, but the wedding itself was always going to be spectacular. You think she designed and put on an amazing 3hour concert tour around the world, but her wedding was going to be a mess? Come on.
I wasn’t expecting a mess, but I didn’t think there would be 1000 celebrities there. It sounds like the Ambani wedding, which wasn’t mess, but seemed kind of weird and tacky anyway.
At least Zuckerberg wasn’t at Swift’s wedding.
I dont think he meant crap show like it was going to be a disaster – just that it seemed logistically complicated and that with one thousand guests, it probably would have been “a lot.”
I dont get invited to things like taylor’s wedding lmao but there are events I get invited to and they just seem overly complicated so I skip. I feel like that was probably his mentality here.
This makes sense….
I stopped reading your comment when you said Taylor Swift isn’t messy 🤣🤣
I don’t care if the ICE guy is their friend’s adoptive father. Is this friend a minor child? If not, he doesn’t need his adoptive father to accompany him to a party. It is absolutely going to come out that these ICE Detention Centers are run like Nazi concentration camps. They willingly invited a concentration camp owner to their wedding. Sorry, stans. There are no mental gymnastics to excuse this absolute WTF of an invite.
Taylor can be questionable sometimes. Remember her boyfriend Matt Healy, the racist. He liked black ghetto abusive pr0n. He made fun of ice spice with the wrong race he thought she was eskimo or something then does Chinese eyes and she was made aware of this but continued to date him until the swifties joined in the backlash. Stop dating a racist mysoginist! Only when her money was threatened did she drop him. So inviting the ICE GULAG chief is pretty on brand.
Hypocrite.
Michael Jordan has a different memory of Barkley’s love of cr”p.😏😏😏😏
In fact, Barkley’s love of hooplah crap and gossiping on it is why Jordan & Tiger Woods don’t eff with him no more.
Getting on Tiger Woods’ bad side is a badge of honor.
Barkley is a character. He just talks.
No, don’t rewrite history. Michael Jordan was doing some really questionable ish and Barkley was the one with balls enough to check him. Because you either are loyal to the king or you get ghosted.
Oh what a loss to not be friends with those two. I’d rather hang with Chuck any day. Maybe we can go to San Antonio for some churros.
He wasn’t wrong.
Exactly. They got married in a sports arena and invited everyone they’ve ever met. No one has 1,000 friends. It’s just a performance.
So true. You are famous? Please come to my wedding!
Didn’t Barkley attend the funeral f his fan/friend Lin Wang? Obviously he will attend a celebration for someone he is close with. I can’t fault him from avoiding a spectacle in the middle of manhattan in July on a holiday weekend. I’m sure he’s “friends” with the Kelce brothers on a superficial level but that’s all.
Having been to numerous Southern weddings where 600 is the norm (plus a few close to 1,000), they probably had a buffet (the norm in the South) over a sit-down dinner because with a buffet, you don’t need as much staff. Now, of course, TnT can afford the staff, but it opens them up to more people leaking photos and details about the wedding.
Buffets are also easier if you have people with dietary issues (create 1 or 2 vegetarian dishes per station) — sit-down you have to pinpoint how many ahead of time get vegetarian meals — and the problem with that is how specific do you go (vegan, for example). I hate buffet lines at parties, but if set up correctly, and decorated so it doesn’t look like a “station,” it can be fun.
But, if the company (catering and staffing) isn’t used to that, it can be chaos.
Yo. You must mean really rich Southern weddings, cause the ones we went to were far more modest like 20-40 family members and friends. The largest was about 100 and that was at a family’s dairy farm with a 160 yo farm house and lake. That was a great venue among the cute baby goats, calves, ponies, rabbits and various chicken amd ducks kept everyone amused.
So this normalization of 1000+ invitees as a typical southern wedding sounds limited to the elite Southern affairs at plantations, golf clubs and private country clubs. I can totally see that. Went to a big one (several hundreds) at a country club because a friend of a friend included us on the invite list because at some point in my college days, we were in Circle K with the groom, or something like that. It was fine because it became a college reunion of sort so the hours ticked by quickly. It was mostly outside in late June and we were all fighting for shade wherever we can find it, because the interiors couldn’t gather that many people under one roof.
So yeah for TnT to invite that many guests and add in the servers at 1:2 ratio and security, she needed a sports stadium or big concert venue.
The point to their wedding isn’t intimacy or being with besties. The point is it’s a show. And Taylor is the consummate performer.
To be fair, the country club was the big reception after the smaller wedding because there was no building big enough to host hundreds and it was hot and humid. Typical southern June weather. It was the same when we and thousands of other families went to college graduation sitting in broiling heat.
So yeah, maybe it’s the new trend among billionaires. European weddings at famous cities like Vienna are passé. It’s MSG, Met-Life or Wembly Stadium, with giant Jumbotrons and classy stadium food-buffet…
Margaret Qualley not going kinda confirms the speculation that she and Taylor don’t get on.
I was browsing other sites earlier, this is always my last stop. One of them said Margaret quietly took down her wedding pictures. Not sure how true it is. Hmm interesting.
Oh yikes. If she and Jack are on the outs it makes sense that she didn’t attend
Just read that Qualley and Antonoff have split.
I’ve changed my mind about him. I like him now. In the end, I think his heart is in the right place. He is also bracingly honest. I wonder why America did not vote him in for president if they like rude, but honest responses. Huh. I’ll have to think about that (but not too hard).
Charles Barkley reminds me of that uncle we all have (drunk or not) who just says what he thinks, to hell with our reactions. The response is TOTALLY rude, funny, and I think kinda on point…teehee…
I appreciate that he has set boundaries and isn’t going to get all fancied up for anyone. Dude just wants to chill and play golf.
I’m not sure if I’m looking at the wrong outlets, but the news about this wedding has felt disjointed.
So if the wedding was going to be a big spectacle, I feel like the news coming out about it could have been smoother. When George Clooney got married, I felt like the news and pictures coming out about it was kind of smooth (even though I wasn’t even interested in his wedding — for some reason, I can clearly remember the pictures of it on CNN and I have no idea why I can remember it).
I remember when Charles Barkley was a one man clown show.
I’m not typically a Charles Barkley fan but when you’re right you’re right. This seems like a giant farce but sadly isn’t. It’s incredibly tacky