The logistics of planning a wedding for a celebrity can sound a lot like warfare. Former Navy SEALs? Stationed at the door. German shepherds? Sniffing the perimeter. Radio frequency jammers? Scrambling the Wi-Fi signal. Drones that shoot down spying drones? Locked and loaded.
For the few high-profile people whose priority is secrecy, wedding security can be as complicated and expensive as the wedding itself.
“It feels like we are special ops,” said Michelle Rago, a luxury-events specialist who has planned weddings for people such as Brooklyn Peltz Beckham. “It’s a crazy world and we have to be prepared for anything.”
When Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce get married—with rumors mounting that a celebration will take place this weekend at Madison Square Garden—the couple will need an ironclad security plan. Keeping things under wraps can involve multiple security teams, inner and outer circles of trust and, in some cases, fake names and fake venues, industry insiders say. Representatives for Swift and Kelce did not respond to requests for comment.
“There are more stalkers now, there are more paparazzi, so it’s a harder dynamic,” said Melvin Key, a retired Washington, D.C., police captain who runs the security firm MVP Worldwide Protection.
‘It’s like jury sequestration’
When celebrity and wealthy couples plan weddings, they tend to seek venues with multiple entrances, said JoAnn Gregoli, a luxury planner who’s worked with Elton John and George Clooney.
“You want a back entrance, an underground exit—basically anywhere a president would stay,” Gregoli said. Insiders know who can handle discretion. Maintaining privacy in Italy, for example, has been tricky in Gregoli’s experience because Italians “like to talk, so you have to be careful.”
Planners say they rarely share exact details when invitations go out. “Sometimes we give out general city and date,” said Jeannie Young Savage, a luxury-events planner in Southern California who plans weddings for athletes, musicians and business executives. “Some information. Not all.”
“It’s like jury sequestration. You’re reducing opportunities for leaks,” said Roman Chiporukha, co-founder of the lifestyle and travel company Roman & Erica.
Chiporukha’s company has “booked multiple venues to keep outsiders guessing,” he said. “It’s like the ‘Italian Job.’ They won’t know which truck has the gold.”
Matt Rogers recalled bringing a security team to a luxury wedding in Colorado, only to find out he was the decoy.
“The details had leaked, so they just changed the venue,” said Rogers, chief operating officer of security firm Charlie Mike Protective Services in Phoenix. “But they proceeded with us, business as usual.”
At some weddings, guests won’t know their final destination until they arrive.
“They park their car, we put them on a shuttle and off they go,” said Sharon Sacks, an events planner in Calabasas, Calif., who threw weddings for Michael Jordan and Jennifer Lopez.
It might sound unbelievable that tech billionaires and A-listers would entertain hopping on a bus to get to a secret location, but Rogers said his clients willingly participate because they trust their friends.
It’s not just guests that are kept in the dark. Vendors are required to sign airtight NDAs, and planners like Savage sometimes won’t give them an exact address until the morning of the wedding. Florists, caterers, DJs and other vendors are at times booked with aliases, said Elisabeth Brown, the U.S. membership director of Knightsbridge Circle, a members-only luxury concierge.
These measures help with paparazzi and fans, but Rago said “rogue family members” could be just as distressing. Rago recalled planning a CEO’s wedding where a top concern was an ex-wife obtaining details and crashing the party.
“We told everyone to stay at these two different hotels, and then we shuttled everyone to somewhere else entirely,” she said. “You can’t control family drama.”
‘We’re not just wedding planners, we’re a SWAT team’
Key, the DC-based security contractor, said ultra-private weddings could have as many as three different security teams at work. These often include private agencies as well as local law enforcement. Private security tends to recruit from the military and police forces; they also hire retired agents from Israel’s Mossad or Shin Bet, he said.
The security costs for weddings could go up to $350,000, Rago said. Gregoli said she’d worked on weddings where the security bill hit $1 million, since it required securing a venue a week ahead. Boots on the ground cost money, but so does technology like drone surveillance and devices that scramble drone signals.
“We’re not just wedding planners, we’re a SWAT team,” said Sacks, the Calabasas planner.
Many high-profile guests arrive to weddings with their own security, an amenity that’s become more popular since the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie. Private-security hirings are up 20% since last year at Rogers’s firm, he said.
“There’s a real fear that they and their wives will get kidnapped,” Savage, the Southern California planner, said about her clients’ guests, “because these people are worth so much money.”
Savage said she’d serviced Chinese billionaires with hulking bodyguards to accompany the mothers of the brides, carefully monitoring the diamonds glistening off their ears and necks.
‘It’s usually their own friends’
A no-photo policy is a given, planners say. Rago said she typically takes away phones and builds special lounges for guests to access them when needed. Others lock phones in pouches, put stickers on phone cameras or deploy devices that sniff out snuck-in phones in use.
Security measures have become more extreme because absolute privacy has become harder to obtain. Gregoli said she once had a security team’s drone shoot down a spying drone during the wedding for a high-profile client in D.C.
“A bride is a celebrity on her wedding day, and a celebrity is a bride on her wedding day,” Sacks said. “They deserve privacy.”
Chiporukha, the luxury concierge co-founder, said he trusted his clients’ guest lists but often feels nervous about plus-ones. Savage, on the other hand, sees all guests as potential threats to confidentiality.
“People are always worried it’s going to be vendors that leak information, but it’s usually their own friends,” Savage said.
She recalled a tennis star’s wedding, where a family portrait had leaked. When the bride asked her to hunt down the source, Savage wasn’t surprised when she found the culprit.
“It was someone on his own management team.”
Write to Chavie Lieber at Chavie.Lieber@WSJ.com
