Photo: Phillip Faraone/GA/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty
Last April, Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz got married in front of 500 guests at her father’s oceanfront estate in Palm Beach, as one does when you are the children of the rich and famous. Beckham, you may know, is the son of Victoria and David Beckham, while Peltz’s parents are a model and billionaire businessman. While Peltz and Victoria Beckham squashed rumors of a feud between them about the wedding dress, a different type of wedding drama has continued to unfold, stemming from an apparent falling out the Peltzes had with their wedding planners and culminating in two lawsuits.
While Beckham was busy racking up his wife’s tattoos, his new stepfather, investor Nelson Peltz, sued Nicole Braghin and Arianna Grijalba, who runs the Miami-based event-planning firm Plan Design Events. After Nelson (again, a billionaire) accused Braghin and Grijalba of failing to return a $159,000 deposit, the two women filed a countersuit seeking damages for breach of contract, calling Nelson a “billionaire bully” and claiming his family put them through marriage-planning hell.
According to Nelson’s lawsuit, the Peltzes hired Braghin and Grijalba in March 2022, six weeks before the wedding, after their first planner fell through. (The original planner told “Page Six” he was “overcommitted” and didn’t have any issues with the families.) Nelson’s suit said their new planners couldn’t handle the couple’s enormous guest list and bowed out after nine days. It also suggested Grijalba had a drinking problem, citing a text she allegedly sent to Peltz at one point during the planning that read, “Now I’m going for a tequila my head is about to explode.” Peltz’s response was also included in the lawsuit: “Yes queen!!!!”
Although their reported countersuit disputes most of Nelson’s claims, Braghin and Grijalba do paint a similarly chaotic picture of what was happening behind the scenes during the nine days they spent planning this wedding. According to their side of the story, “Page Six” reports, they worked 17-hour days to meet the Peltzes’ demands, which included making flower bouquets whiter and creating a “water dance floor,” whatever that is, for the after- party. At one point, they say, Peltz’s mother, Claudia, asked them not to tell her husband that they’d paid upwards of $100,000 for hair and makeup services, and both Peltz women were apparently intent on keeping the planning disasters hidden from Victoria Beckham.
A lot of the disputes seem to have been about the celebrity-packed guest list, which the wedding planners claim Peltz was constantly changing. They said that after mistakenly telling Peltz that F1 driver Lewis Hamilton was already attending, they received an angry text from him that said, “Lewis Hamilton did NOT RSVP. So explain why his name is on the list please.” On a more understandable note, Peltz was also concerned about the Florida governor and the generally abhorrent politician Ron DeSantis attending. She allegedly texted them, “Desantis must be OFF THE GUEST LIST. PLEASE CONFIRM!” Frankly, I would be using the same tone if I thought DeSantis might come to my wedding, but I digress.
Where is Brooklyn Peltz Beckham in all this besides buried under layers of tattoo ink? Well, his betrothal did not want him involved in the planning process. When the planners asked him to weigh in on something, Peltz allegedly texted them, “I do not trust Brooklyn with this. U should be asking an assistant. He has no idea. And is guessing. Her fiancé remained mostly silent in the group chat, apparently, except to ask about the possibility of setting up guns that could shoot nets to capture any camera drones hovering above the venue.
Another element Beckham had a lot of thoughts on: the Wendy’s food truck the couple considered hiring for their guests. (This sounds like a cool, everyman thing to have at a celebrity wedding until you realize that Peltz’s father is the chairman of Wendy’s.) According to the countersuit, Beckham weighed in extensively on the wedding burgers, which were named after him and his bride . Texts he allegedly sent to Braghin and Grijalba have him planning a “double or single burger” dubbed the Brooklyn and a “lettuce instead of bun and meat for the girls” named after Peltz.
After Braghin and Grijalba left, the Peltzes reportedly hired event planner Michelle Rago to handle the final weeks of wedding planning. While the legal battle drags on, one crucial question remains unanswered: Did this couple really serve the Spice Girls bunless burgers?
The Cut has reached out to represent Nelson Peltz, as well as Braghin and Grijalba, for comments and will update if we hear back.
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