Taylor Swift was a big part of their weddings. Now, fans are celebrating hers.

Taylor Swift’s upcoming wedding to Travis Kelce is already one of the biggest celebrity moments of 2026. But for some fans who say that Swift’s influence loomed large over their own big days, it’s also a sweet full-circle moment.

That includes Los Angeles-based Alex Goldschmidt, who, in 2019, went viral when Swift herself performed at his engagement party after he popped the question to his now-husband Ross.

Goldschmidt, who works in social media, met Swift backstage at an Ed Sheeran concert. He said the two hit it off so well that she later asked him to be in her music video for her 2014 single “Shake It Off.” They stayed in touch — but Goldschmidt tells Yahoo that he first felt a connection with the pop star just from listening to her music.

“Growing up gay in a time when it was just becoming more normalized was hard,” he says. “But her music is like listening to a diary and having a reflective moment to sit with your thoughts and feelings.”

In 2019, Goldschmidt listened to her song “King of My Heart,” from her 2017 album Reputation — and decided to propose. He emailed Swift to tell her how her song inspired him to take the plunge. So, Swift showed up at their engagement party with a guitar in hand. She performed an acoustic version of “King of My Heart” and snapped photos with Goldschmidt’s family and friends. She even gifted the couple a Le Labo candle and “sweet note.”

Swift didn’t make it to their actual wedding, but her music did. “We definitely played Taylor on the dance floor,” he says. “She was definitely there in spirit. She made it all happen.”

There’s little doubt that Swift is now one of the most famous musicians in the world, particularly coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, where her surprise 2020 albums Folklore and Evermore garnered her brand-new fans. Since 2020, she’s won Album of the Year at the Grammys twice. Her albums routinely smash records. The Eras Tour was a cultural phenomenon. And now, she’s getting married to one of the most famous players in the NFL.

But for the fans Yahoo spoke with who brought Swift into one of the most significant days of their lives, it’s not about Swift’s current place on the cultural landscape. It’s about what she’s represented to them over the years.

“For a lot of people, she’s just such an influential person in our lives,” Anneliese Glaubitz, a wedding planner with Cheersy, a digital marketplace for wedding coordinators, and a Swiftie herself, tells Yahoo. “You want your wedding to feel really personal, so when you love an artist, you want to incorporate their music or incorporate something that reminds you of them.”

Glaubitz has seen guests hand out friendship bracelets (a popular trend from Swift’s Eras Tour) and hang signs around their wedding venue featuring Swift’s lyrics. She’s also seen fun uses of her songs incorporated into wedding ceremonies, such as one bride who walked out of the ceremony to the tune of Swift’s defiant 2024 love song “But Daddy I Love Him,” off her album The Tortured Poets Department. And one of her Swiftie clients even got married at a venue on Cornelia Street in New York City — where Swift herself lived, and which shares a name with a song from her 2019 album Lover.

Philadelphia-based therapist Erin Seeherman, who got married in 2019 after her now husband proposed at the Reputation tour a year earlier, couldn’t have imagined her wedding without a few hints of Swift. She walked down the aisle to “Call It What You Want,” a track off Swift’s sixth album that Swift was playing during the proposal.

The party itself evoked Swift’s Lover album: think lots of hearts, butterflies, flowers and sparkles. The wedding’s place cards were origami paper rings — a nod to Swift’s Lover track “Paper Rings.” Even the signature cocktails were named after Swift songs.

And, of course, the dance portion of the night included Swift’s most iconic bops — about 25% of the playlist was Swift, Seeherman says. And while Swift didn’t show up to her wedding, she did congratulate Seerham on Twitter.

“I got to meet her at the Eras Tour movie premiere [in October 2023], and though I only had a very brief interaction with her, she’s as lovely as anyone would expect,” Seeherman says. “So I have nothing but the fondest feelings for her.”

For British Columbia-based Alva, who asked not to use her last name, Swift’s music always happened to meet her where she was in life. She cried over heartbreaks alongside Swift. She was engaged to her now husband when Swift was falling for Kelce. So when it came time for Alva to plan her own May 2026 wedding, it was a no-brainer for her to incorporate her favorite artist’s work, whether that was nods to lyrics placed around the room (“Welcome to our love story” hung over a photo moment) or requesting her guests learn “The Fate of Ophelia” dance, so they could all have a special moment on the dance floor.

The party even featured the real banner that was on display at the Vancouver stop of Swift’s Eras Tour and a recreation of a moment from the “Mine” music video, in which Swift stands in front of a tree with hanging photographs.

“All of her lyrics are so magical, and the type of love that she’s been writing about for the last 20 years — it’s crazy to be in a place to have finally found it,” Alva says.

Swift likely won’t be inviting fans to her wedding to Kelce, but that’s more than OK for the people who saved a metaphorical seat for Swift at theirs.

“For millennials like myself, Taylor was singing about the high school experience and crushes and that type of longing and everything we were feeling at that time while we were in high school, and now we’ve gotten to continue with her on that journey,” Goldschmidt says. When asked what marriage advice he has for Swift, he says there’s not much that the queen of love songs doesn’t know. If he had to give some of his own words of wisdom, he recommends not going to bed angry. “Try to remember to always see the good in each other.”

Seeherman is aware that some Swift fans think they know her in a more personal way, and doesn’t want to overstep by getting too “parasocial” about her wedding — as Swift, after all, has already given so much of herself through her music. But she says that Swift  “absolutely deserves to be happy, and to really take a moment to enjoy everyone showering her with their love — and her husband-to-be showering her with his love.”