In today’s “feel old yet?” news, Brooklyn Beckham is engaged to Nicola Peltz. Victoria is going to be a mummy-in-law!
In Celebrity Social Media, where I cover the Beckhams almost as religiously as Lainey covers BTS, I’ve often wondered if Brooklyn would marry young like his parents (they were 24 and 25 and already had Brooklyn). Since his late teens, Brooklyn has been in a series of pretty serious, meet-the-parents relationships with Chloe Grace Moretz and Hana Cross. (He deleted all his photos of Hana off social media, but he can’t delete the photoshoot they did for Victoria’s Reebok line.)
Each of those relationships was public – sitting front row at fashion shows, hitting up parties with his parents, lots of family photos with his siblings. Victoria may get blasted by the UK press for showing off her kids in service of “Brand Beckham,” something the tabloids have been trying to pinpoint as a source of tension between her and David despite the fact that he posts them about as much as she does, but that particular criticism doesn’t play in North America, where celebrity babies are monetized before they are even born.
Now the family is expanding with Nicola, an actress/model who is wealthy, worldly, and connected to a lot of celebrities but seems private, too. She doesn’t have an influencer vibe at all; her father is a billionaire and her mother is a former model and, going by her Instagram, she’s very family-oriented. She has been enthusiastically welcomed into Beckham family and they all posted about the engagement at what looks like a small gathering in the UK. It was coordinated.
Brooklyn and Nicola are probably not planning the wedding quite yet because of the pandemic, but the Beckhams love a blowout at a country house. Remember their wedding at Beckingham Palace (which they sold in 2014) and the purple outfits and thrones? This party will probably be a lot more understated but even more expensive – sure they are millionaires, but Nicola’s father is a billionaire finance guy. I’m looking forward to how the British tabloids will strain to turn this into a problem for the Beckhams while also tying it into 24/7 Beckham nostalgia. Between that and maximizing the Goldenballs puns, this will be a full time job for the headline writers.
So who will be on the trans-Atlantic guest list? You can bet Brooklyn’s godfathers Elton John and David Furnish will be there, along with his godmother, Elisabeth Hurley. Liv Tyler, Eva Longoria, Marc Anthony, the Ramsay family, and her friend BFF Sofia Richie will make the list– and maybe a few royals. Victoria and David attended the weddings of both Will and Kate and Harry and Meghan. I don’t know the protocols of who can go to what, but I imagine that would be under consideration – you send the invite, right?
There will also, of course, be pregnancy rumours too as Brooklyn referred to future children in his post – again, he seems to want to follow his parents’ path and has found a partner who wants that as well. Going by Instagram comments, Nicola and her family seem just as enamoured with the Beckhams as they are with her… but there are a lot of tough conversations to come. Not matter what the budget is, weddings and traditions and etiquette make people throw down. Parents and in-laws can be a major pain-in-the-ass; one minute you are all best friends and heart emojis on Instagram and the next minute you are in a screaming match over the font on an RSVP card. Families will go three rounds over napkin rings. Relationships are torn apart over the buffet vs. sit down dinner debate.
And then, after the wedding, where do they settle – in the US with her family or the UK with his? The Beckhams have taken a few runs at living full time in America, first moving to LA, but went back to London. Then Brooklyn went to school in New York and dropped out to head back to London. They spend time in the US but it’s never been home. With David’s commitment to his soccer team in Miami, they’ve picked up some new real estate, presumably because they plan to spend a significant amount of time there. That means the Beckhams might be stateside, yet again. Still, there’s no chance at getting another Coming To America (the Victoria Beckham version). This is so 2007 it hurts. And Brooklyn would have been around eight. Feel old yet?
