Is There A Way To Beat The ‘Vogue’ Wedding Curse? An Investigation

Close your eyes, and picture your perfect dream wedding. Now imagine that same dream wedding if you didn’t have a strict budget. Pretty incredible, right? Probably good enough to be covered in the elite forum for wedding features, the one and only Vogue magazine. Except, it turns out that might not actually be a good thing. From JLo and Ben Affleck to Sophia Bush and Grant Hughes, the evidence is stacking up: Are weddings featured in Vogue cursed?

No matter how many times your employers try to insist otherwise, TikTok is an educational resource, and one brave TikToker/scientific researcher has been keeping tabs on every single gorgeous Vogue wedding that led to a quickie divorce (usually four years, or less). So, we can thank the creator Georgie for pointing out this bleak trend.

As a mere peasant, it’s hard to imagine that the saying “money can’t buy happiness” is actually, like a thing, as opposed to a lie planted by the rich to keep us from rioting in the streets. Yet the alarming number of canceled marriages, which first began with parties that cost more than a year of my college tuition and were meticulously detailed in the pages of Vogue beg to differ. So, if you’re as delusional as me and think you may find yourself in the pages of a wedding editorial one day, you better keep reading to find out what the Vogue wedding curse is and how to beat it.

What is the Vogue wedding curse?

The theory (or conspiracy) says that Vogue weddings, as beautiful as they are, are more likely to end in a short-lived marriage. Air Mail says divorce often comes for these couples in four years or less, and applies to all of the celebrities and millionaires featured — regardless of level of fame.

Credit where credit is due, I was first introduced to the concept of the Vogue wedding curse by user @Georgiejxmes. Georgie gracefully narrated the magazine’s beautiful recap of model Meadow Walker’s 2021 wedding to actor Louis Thornton-Allan. (If Meadow’s last name sounds familiar it’s because she’s the daughter of the late Paul Walker, of Fast and Furious and being extremely hunky fame.) The Dominican Republic destination event included two custom wedding dresses by the creative director of Givenchy, a private beachside candlelit dinner and a firework display. But as Georgie jump-scared at the end of her TikTok, Meadow and Lucas announced divorce around two years later. I was gagged! Turns out, this was just one of dozens of stunning luxury weddings, all highlighted in Anna Wintour’s diary, that quickly ended in divorce too soon after the wildly expensive nuptials.

Take another stunning case study: the wedding of Sophia Bush to Grant Hughes. Before Sophia and Grant’s 13-month marriage ended in her eyebrow-raisingly quick rebound to Ashlyn Harris, the couple had a decadent wedding weekend. The Vogue affair entailed activist events all over Oklahoma to commemorate the Tulsa Massacre and Black Wallstreet (pause for comprehension), an “elevated cowboy” dinner at a Frank Lloyd Wright home, bridesmaid gift baskets including engraved diamond necklaces, and of course an ornate wedding ceremony at the city’s most prestigious museum. Sophia traipsed down the stairs in a custom Monique Lhuillier gown covered in a “heritage print” made of flowers from hers and Grant’s native countries and the bees they raised together.

Probs worth mentioning that Sophia’s girlfriend Ashlyn also had a (maybe cursed) Vogue wedding in 2019 to Ali Krieger. The soccer stars beckoned the USWNT to rage in Miami three days after Christmas — as Megan Rapinoe (passive aggressively?) joked. In September of 2023, just one (1) coincidental month after Sophia’s divorce went live, they called things off. Hauntingly right before the curse stopwatch timed out at four years.

The Most Expensive Vogue Wedding Ever

Yeah, so, that’s a lot. I’m no scientist, but a little correlation and causation here seems to show that the more elaborate and ostentatious the wedding is, the quicker and/or more shocking the breakup. The first wedding to inspire the Vogue Wedding to Quickie Divorce series is one of the most expensive featured (costs paid to the city of San Francisco and for the rehearsal dinner set up totaled over $150k).

Ivy Getty (the casual oil heiress to the Getty empire) had a wedding so insanely expensive I don’t even think I can afford to write about it. Just know it took seven full days to decorate, Earth, Wind & fucking Fire performed and her wedding dress as well as her fourteen bridesmaids’ dresses were designed by John Paul Galliano. Did I mention she also had fourteen looks total and the wedding was officiated by Nancy Pelosi while Anya Taylor Joy was a bridesmaid? And yet with all that flamboyant fanfare Ivy and her husband separated after a year, followed by an official divorce announcement two years after the day.

As one TikTok comment said, “I have a theory that the bigger the wedding the higher chance of divorce. Every couple I know who are truly in love have either eloped had a very intimate wedding.” Is the Shakespearean adage “doth protest too much” manifesting in wedding ceremonies to die for? Another commenter who wrote “I see these big weddings and it gives I care about the wedding not the marriage” def thinks so.

Have all the weddings featured in Vogue ended in divorce?

Of course, there are successful marriages still kickin’ that were once showcased in Vogue. Jasmine Tookes is still (presumably) blissfully wed to the Vice President of Ecuador’s son after five years and one child. That doesn’t mean the curse isn’t real though! Despite the fact that Jasmine’s wedding would’ve brought me to visceral uncontrollable sobs, for Vogue wedding standards it was actually kind of chill. Maybe their relative demure-ness helped them beat the curse? Georgie’s experiment now maintains that success stories actually have to pass the ten-year mark in order for us to know the lucky couple has shirked the curse for sure. It’s basic science.