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Details emerge of Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce wedding events at MSG

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce will be celebrating their nuptials with about 1,000 guests this holiday weekend in New York City after days of speculation about the most anticipated celebrity wedding of the year.

A rehearsal dinner was held Thursday evening, law enforcement sources said. The couple plans to have a wedding celebration Friday into the early hours of Saturday morning at Madison Square Garden, according to two law enforcement sources familiar with the security planning for the events. 

The rehearsal dinner Thursday was for around 100 people at the Infosys Theater at Madison Square Garden, the two sources told CBS News. The second, larger event can accommodate around 1,000 people, the sources said, with the space booked until 4 a.m.

ABC News was first to report the planned celebrations on Tuesday. 

Guests lucky enough to be among the 1,000 people attending the celebration on Friday will be treated to cocktails on the 6th floor concourse of Madison Square Garden at 4 p.m. (doors open at 3:30 p.m.), a ceremony on the arena floor scheduled for 5:30 p.m. and then a reception set to start at 6:30 p.m. that will go until 2 a.m., the sources told CBS News, noting that the exact times are subject to change. 

The event will feature musical talent, and the couple is building a massive set inside the arena for the event. 

Guests will be entering the Garden via a special VIP area that will be covered with a tent, the sources said. Security officials are expecting about 500 vehicles to bring the guests.

For the 100 or so family, friends and VIPs attending the rehearsal dinner, Thursday evening festivities at MSG’s Infosys Theater were scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. and go until 10:30 p.m., the sources said. 

The New York City Police Department is preparing to handle the extra traffic, security, media, fans and paparazzi that come with an event like this. The couple has also hired private security. 

The wedding will likely use about the same amount of NYPD resources as any other major event or concert at Madison Square Garden or a big game at Yankee Stadium, according to two law enforcement sources familiar with the security planning. 

About 135 officers will likely be assigned to work the MSG wedding events on Thursday and Friday, the sources said. They noted that an event organizer typically covers overtime police staffing costs, and expected about 25% of officers’ hours to be billed as overtime at roughly $90 to $100 per hour per officer.

Fans have been eagerly awaiting details and sharing rumors about the potential ceremony for Swift and Kelce after news broke that Swift had rented out the massive concert venue, which locals refer to as “the Garden.”

Swift’s team applied for a street activity permit from July 2 to July 4, a senior law enforcement source told CBS News last week. 

The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story.

John Hart, a retired assistant chief of the NYPD who has extensive experience handling security for high-profile events, told CBS News that the confined space of Madison Square Garden will help the security team keep Swift, Kelce and their guests safe. He added that obtaining the street activity permits frees up the burden on the NYPD and allows for private security to help secure the area around the venue.

“That said, it will be swarmed by media of all types and fans hoping to catch a glimpse,” Hart said.  

Managing media and what’s known as “fan pens” will likely fall on the NYPD, as they will be outside the hard frozen zone secured by private security.

“Paparazzi chasing cars with guests and swarming hotels will be a side issue that will fall to NYPD as well,” Hart said.

Large trucks have been seen parked outside the venue in recent days, with work crews unloading stage equipment, lights and other gear, much of it under wraps. Some of it bore signs labeled “Garden Party” or “GP.”

Ahead of their wedding events, Swift and Kelce donated $26 million to charities this week, with donations spread out across 20 local and national charities, according to Swift’s publicist, with many located in areas where the couple has deep ties.

The world’s oldest president left for a ‘brief stay’ in Europe. He hasn’t returned in two months

By CNN
(CNN) — When Paul Biya won his first presidential election in Cameroon in 1984, Nformi Bime was 23 and still a student.Bime is now 65 and retired from teaching. Biya is 93 – and still president. Last year, he won a disputed eighth term that could keep him in office until he is nearly 100.“The best is yet to come,” Biya said before the election, which his opponents called fraudulent and was marred by deadly clashes between protesters and police.For the past two months, however, the man who has ruled Cameroon since 1982, when as prime minister he assumed power following the resignation of the sitting president, has been thousands of miles away. He left on June 7 for what his office called a “brief private stay in Europe” — now his longest uninterrupted absence from the Central African nation in years.Last week, government spokesman René Emmanuel Sadi told French radio RFI that Biya was in Geneva, Switzerland and was not hospitalized, but did not give more detail on his whereabouts.A president who is rarely seenBiya is Cameroon’s second president since independence in 1960 and one of the world’s longest-serving leaders. He first won office in 1984 under a one-party system, then won six more elections after multiparty politics was introduced.He has spent extended periods abroad during his presidency. But his latest absence has revived questions about his health and who is running the country while he is away.Rumors about Biya’s health and whereabouts have long been part of public life in Cameroon, where he is rarely seen in public. His office has repeatedly had to push back against speculation that he was seriously ill or had died. In 2024, the government banned media discussions about his health, calling them a national security matter.Biya’s long rule also reflects a wider contrast across Africa. The continent has the world’s youngest population, but several countries are still led by aging leaders whose political careers began decades ago, including former liberation figures now governing in a different era.For millions of Cameroonians, Biya is the only president they have ever known.Bime’s children are among them. His oldest is 32, and his youngest is 18.Abit Riassai Acha, a 26-year-old doctoral student and community youth leader at the University of Yaoundé II, belongs to the same generation.“Growing up, President Biya was the only president I knew, so his presidency has been part of my entire experience of Cameroon,” said Acha, who voted for the first time in last year’s presidential election, backing the youthful opposition candidate Samuel Hiram Iyodi, 38.After more than four decades under the same president, questions about his leadership have only grown.“Because this has happened repeatedly over the years, many Cameroonians have become used to it,” Acha said of Biya’s long absences. “But becoming accustomed to something does not necessarily mean that people should stop asking questions about how the country is being governed.”Iyodi, who finished eighth in last year’s presidential election, which several candidates, including one of Biya’s main challengers, were barred from contesting, has called on parliament to ask Cameroon’s Constitutional Council to consider whether Biya’s absence amounts to a vacancy in the presidency. But such a move is unlikely to succeed, given the dominance of Biya’s ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement.Despite being away, Biya has continued to make key decisions from abroad, including a major military reshuffle announced earlier this month. Yet questions about his prolonged stay overseas have left officials publicly assuring Cameroonians that their president is still alive.Government spokesman Sadi dismissed concerns about a power vacuum, telling RFI that “President Paul Biya is alive” and “will soon return.”From hope to frustrationBime is old enough to remember when Biya was the change. He first heard Biya’s name in the 1970s, when he served as secretary-general of the presidency under Cameroon’s first president after independence, Ahmadou Ahidjo. After Ahidjo resigned in 1982, Biya took over.When Biya first appeared on the ballot two years later, Bime saw him as a “representation of hope,” he said. “We believed he was young and dynamic – handsome too. He meant so much to Cameroonians.”Few imagined that the man they saw as a new beginning would remain in power for decades. For his critics, the disappointment is not just about how long Biya has stayed in office, but what they see as his failure to improve the lives of ordinary Cameroonians.Political analyst Collins Molua Ikome, a Cameroonian based in Germany, said he saw some of the country’s problems firsthand when he visited Cameroon in April.“Roads in Cameroon are extremely bad. I even witnessed a fatal accident,” he told CNN.Ikome also pointed to frequent power cuts, corruption and a lack of jobs for young people.Wilson Tamfuh, a public and international law professor at the University of Dschang in West Cameroon, said the country has institutions that can keep the government running when the president delegates responsibilities. Key duties, he said, can be handled by the prime minister, the secretary-general at the presidency and ministers.But the bigger question, Tamfuh said, is whether the government is solving the country’s longstanding problems.“People want the Anglophone crisis resolved, standards of living ameliorated, more good roads, fewer people on the streets with degrees, and more,” he told CNN, referring to the years-long separatist conflict in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions.Whenever Biya eventually leaves office, his successor will inherit a country also facing attacks by Boko Haram militants in the north and deep economic frustration among young people.Healthcare is another concern. Ikome said access to quality healthcare remains out of reach for many Cameroonians.“Life expectancy in the country is below 70 years. However, Biya has far outlived that due to access to medical healthcare abroad, which the ordinary Cameroonian cannot access due to poverty,” Ikome said.The divide is not unique to Cameroon. Across Africa, political elites have often sought healthcare or maintained homes abroad, even as public services at home struggle.For Bime, the question is more personal: Will he live to see another president?After decades of waiting for change, he worries he may not – and that Biya could outlive him and many others who are not part of the country’s elite.“Anytime they have a cold, they run overseas and are taken care of, but the other Cameroonians are dying because of lack of care,” he said.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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