The wedding of Nicola Peltz and Brooklyn Beckham was supposed to launch them as the hot new it couple. Has a new lawsuit ruined that?
“Nicola Peltz: Hi, I’m Nicola Peltz
Clip from GQ Couple Quiz
Brooklyn Beckham: Hi, I’m Brooklyn Beckham…
Both: …and this is the GQ Couples Quiz.
Brooklyn Beckham: That was in sync.
Nicola Peltz: We killed that. Are you ready?”
In early 2022, Nicola Peltz – the daughter of an American billionaire – and Brooklyn Beckham – the son of Britain’s most famous couple, David and Victoria Beckham, were in the middle of a PR blitz.
Charming and chatty… suddenly, they were everywhere.
“Hi I’m Nicola Peltz and I’m Brooklyn and this is British Vogue’s Mr & Mrs challenge…”
Vogue clip
“James Corden: I mean Brooklyn you’re getting married! In a couple of months time! *audience clap* Congratulations… We’re very much looking forward to it…”
Clip Late Late Show
“Hi Vogue it’s Brooklyn and today I’m cooking a special Valentine’s Day dinner for my fiancé Nicola…”
Vogue clip
What they were selling was… themselves. Or really, their relationship. In April 2022 they were getting married.
It was a fairytale for the digital age… and it was supposed to launch them as the new gen-z it couple.
“Nicola Peltz: Okay, describe my ideal wedding.
Clip from GQ Couples Quiz
Brooklyn Beckham: [intake of breath] Probably our two families… very small, very petite, you know, very lovely, like, colours… your favourite colours are like pink, light blue… creams… you know what, I don’t know.
Nicola Peltz: Okay… [laughing a bit]
Brooklyn Beckham: But our wedding is going to be lovely.
Nicola Peltz: You did half good…”
Brooklyn Beckham’s attempt to describe his fiancé’s ideal wedding was slightly off…
A couple of months later they tied the knot in a multi-million dollar ceremony at Nicola Peltz’s vast family mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. With around 600 invited guests… and three days of celebrations… it was not small.
The wedding was exclusively covered by Vogue. The magazine detailed the speeches, the emotion, and – of course – the year-long fitting process for Nicola Peltz’s custom Valentino dress.
It was a picture-perfect day with a press roll-out that was planned to the final detail.
Until eight months later, when Nicola’s father, Nelson Peltz, quietly filed a lawsuit against two of the wedding planners.
***
Nelson Peltz spent 2022 building a multi-million dollar stake in Unilever, the consumer goods company, and gearing up for a fight with Disney to try and get a seat on the board.
This is Spencer Jakab from the Wall Street Journal:
“He’s not the largest shareholder by far, but he’s the loudest shareholder and was demanding all kinds of changes.”
Spencer Jakab
With a fortune estimated to be around $1.5 billion, Nelson Peltz is one of the wealthiest people in the United States.
So when he filed a lawsuit requesting two wedding planners who briefly worked on his daughter’s wedding return a deposit of $159,000 – pocket change for a man like him – heads turned.
The original wedding designer had left with just six weeks to go. And the new planners, Nicole Braghin and Arianna Grijalba, lasted a matter of days.
In the lawsuit, Nelson Peltz describes Nicole Braghin and Arianna Grijalba as unprofessional and incompetent, and accused them of misrepresenting their experience. He claims that they were fired before they signed an official contract.
But… the wedding planners are fighting back.
They filed a countersuit for breach of contract, labelling Nelson Peltz a “billionaire bully”. They released hundreds of private text messages and emails from the run-up to the big day.
Predictably… the countersuit went viral.
“Would any of us actually give a [bleep] about this wedding were it not for the insane lawsuit? Absolutely not!”
TikTok montage
“…plus everyone knows the litigation is likely to last longer than the actual marriage itself…”
“You know how your wedding is supposed to be the best day of your life? Well not so much for Nicola Peltz and Brooklyn Beckham…”
Nicole Braghin and Arianna Grijalba allege that they saved the Peltz family from “public humiliation” by bringing order to a “chaotic situation”.
It’s a bomb dropped right into the laps of Nicola Peltz and Brooklyn Beckham.
So, why does it matter?
***
The Peltz-Beckham wedding lawsuit is a glimpse into the world of the rich and famous. And it’s about the game of celebrity – and who knows how to play it.
For Nelson Peltz, the calculation seems simple: he’s out to right a wrong. A source close to the Peltz family told Tortoise that the behaviour of the wedding planners demanded a response.
“No, it does not surprise me to hear that Nelson Peltz is fighting over perhaps $150,000 and being litigious because you know, the mindset that he has – a sort of a bulldog watching every penny bottom line mindset – is what one needs to get to that level of wealth.
Spencer Jakab
In Nelson Peltz’s business world being likeable doesn’t matter. But for his daughter and son-in-law… being liked is everything.
The details of the lawsuit undermine the carefully crafted image that Brooklyn and Nicola and their team of PRs have spent months curating – of a perfect, frictionless lifestyle and a perfect, frictionless wedding. It reveals to the world how artificial the whole thing is.
Chris Lochery is editor of Popbitch, the celebrity gossip newsletter.
“I would think this only sort of makes them look, uh, like disinterested self-involved nepo-babies, which is really the sort of thing they probably are trying to avoid… It’s the worst, the worst possible combination of being very fixated on tiny details and then very, very sloppy with actual, proper logistics that might help.
Chris Lochery
It’s hard to cultivate a brand new – effortless – image when your texts are being shared all over the internet, telling a different story.
The lawsuit is a rare moment we get to glimpse behind the curtain and see the ugly reality of how the celebrity sausage gets made.
It shows us the competing priorities between wealth and fame.
Yes, the wedding was a private, family moment… but it was also a career opportunity for both Nicola and Brooklyn. It was a business deal of a different kind.
The lawsuit might have just ruined that deal.
The episode of the Sensemaker was written and producer by Claudia Williams and Imy Harper.