Weddings are everywhere right now. Dua Lipa and Callum Turner. Ming Xi and Mario Ho. Venus Williams and Andrea Preti. And don’t forget the recent wave of high-profile engagements: Zendaya and Tom Holland, Zoë Kravitz and Harry Styles, Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift.

With every new wedding comes endless discussion of the dress, the venue, and the guest list. Increasingly, I’ve noticed that the conversation around weddings focuses as much on the aesthetic and curatorial choices a couple makes as it does on the couple themselves—myself included, guilty as charged.

In this episode, I ask whether celebrity culture and social media have fundamentally shifted our understanding of weddings. In the age of social media, weddings increasingly function as displays of cultural capital. Every decision, however small, communicates something about taste (shoutout to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu!) and, by extension, social position.

Is the wedding still about love? Or has it become a cultural performance for an audience of millions? Could it perhaps be both?

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