Matty Healys Wedding: Taylor Swifts Shadow Looms

When envisioned her dream wedding, it was said to be in with her ex, , waiting with his 1975 bandmates at the end of the aisle as she dazzled in a glamorous Old Hollywood gown.

But this weekend another woman will be living the international pop sensation’s dream.

The model and grungy ‘it’ girl, Gabbriette Bechtel, who is often considered the ‘antithesis’ to the singer’s girl-next-door persona, will be tying the knot with Healy – thought of among Ms Swift’s camp as ‘the one that got away’ after their brief liaison in 2023.

Guests have been jetting in this week for what is forecast to be a far chicer event than Swift’s excessive £50million Madison Square Gardens extravaganza with American footballer less than two weeks ago.

It is unclear where the wedding this Saturday will be held but I am hearing whispers that it will be at the super-cool hotel, Chateau Marmont, on Sunset Boulevard.

And now the stars of nineties British television are descending on Hollywood too, as the groom’s parents, ’s and Benidorm’s , are said to have touched down.

I can reveal that the pair, who divorced in 2012 after 24 years of marriage, are being put up before the nuptials in the luxury Sunset Tower Hotel in West Hollywood.

As for the blushing bride’s parents, her Mexican mother, Chayo, and father, Gary Bechtel, of Swiss-German descent, are believed to be in LA already with the nearly-weds as they prepare for the weekend.

The young couple, who have been engaged since 2024 after a nine-month romance, are said to have spent £100,000 jetting their loved ones out to Tinseltown.

But there are none, I am told, happier than Loose Women panellist Denise, at the upcoming wedding. She is said to be relieved that her son will marry the ‘down-to-earth’ Gabbriette rather than Taylor – arguably the most famous woman in the world.

A close friend of the actress said: ‘Matty really did love Taylor, but it was her insane fanbase that broke them up.

‘Denise hated what that did to Matty and feels Taylor could have been more supportive and that her PR made out as if they were “just a fling” which really exacerbated matters, and then Taylor wrote an entire album about it!

‘Taylor’s world was all just too mad and unstable for Denise and she hated what it did to Matty.

‘She loves Gabbriette, who is more down-to-earth and supportive of her son, she couldn’t be happier.’

The Red singer and Healy shared an intense and highly publicised four-month romance in 2023 after the singer broke up with her previous British boyfriend of six years, Joe Alwyn, during her record-breaking Eras Tour.

But their friendship started in 2014, when they met backstage at a 1975 concert. At the time they were rumoured to be dating, with the Girls singer and Taylor often sharing their deep respect for one another during interviews. At the time Healy dismissed the claims.

However, her army of fans, dubbed Swifties, who are notorious for their extreme dedication to the singer, relentlessly trolled Healy as they believed he was not good enough for her.

The 1975 frontman is considered a controversial character in the music industry. Just months before he started up with Taylor in 2023 he appeared to do a Nazi salute on stage, although many believed the gesture was intended to mock Kanye West.

After their acrimonious split in June of that year, Taylor started dating her now husband the American football star, Travis Kelce, in August. Meanwhile, Healy was linked with Gabbriette just three months after the breakup, in September, with the pair meeting through their mutual friend, singer Charli XCX, who is married to Healy’s bandmate George Daniel.

During a break from touring in October, Taylor recorded her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department.

While it has not been confirmed, the body of work quite obviously alludes to her love for Healy and her desire to marry the man she referred to as a ‘tattooed golden retriever’.

One lyric read: ‘At dinner, you take my ring off my finger / And put it on the one people put wedding rings on / And that’s the closest I’ve come to my heart exploding.’

It was a line that sent Swifties into a tailspin, as none had appreciated how serious she was about the cigarette-smoking frontman.

But the one person who did know was Denise.

And so when the Coronation Street star appeared on the Andy Cohen Show last year, after announcing her son was engaged to Gabbriette, she made her feelings known about Taylor - a move she would come to regret.

‘Being her mother-in-law is a role I’m happy I lost,’ the actress said sensationally. ‘Not that I have anything against her at all.

‘It was, it was, tricky. Listen, you’re not allowed to say anything, and then she writes a whole album about it. Matty has taken it completely in good grace; he’s very happy with his amazing fiancée, Gabbriette, who is gorgeous. We’ve moved on.’

Suddenly the mother-of-two became the number one enemy of millions of Swifties worldwide as they relentlessly pursued her for weeks afterwards, calling her ‘disgusting’ online and issuing death threats on social media.

A concerned Healy was seen comforting his mother a week later as she sat in floods of tears on the pavement outside a restaurant in Los Angeles, clutching a tissue as she cried into his shoulder.

The mother and son were dining with Gabbriette, to whom he had proposed with a custom-made black diamond engagement ring a year earlier – but the Taylor problem was apparently still plaguing them.

Gabbriette then made her own dig at Swift on the eve of her latest album release, Life of a Showgirl, last year.

When a comedian on Instagram made a parody of a Taylor Swift song, the model, who had been engaged to Healy for two years, commented: ‘Babe record Actually Romantic, please’ – a reference to Swift’s track on the album rumoured to have been written about Gabbriette’s friend Charli XCX.

She, too, then faced the onslaught of Swifties who came after her with their torches and pitchforks, saying she was ‘obsessed’ with Swift and ‘clearly unhappy in her own relationship’.

The drama has followed the couple right up until this week, with fans claiming they had ‘purposely’ planned their wedding date a fortnight after Taylor’s 4th of July nuptials to spite the singer.

But, despite the three-year-long engagement, the pair had their date in the calendar as far back as February, months before Taylor’s New York wedding had been announced.

There are whispers online that the Miss Americana singer, who is notorious for long-standing feuds, might have even pushed her[itals] wedding forward after less than a year of being engaged in order to pre-empt Healy’s July nuptials.

This has not been confirmed, but it’s safe to say the singer will not be hopping on her private jet and heading down to LA this weekend.

The guest list is instead expected to feature all the big-hitters of the cigarette-wielding party-girl ‘Brat’ celebrity friendship group - notoriously not friends with Taylor - including Charli XCX, the supermodel Alex Consani and Kanye West’s ex-girlfriend, Julia Fox.

They are set to ‘out-cool’ Taylor’s A-list congregation which included 1,000 guests, from Brad Pitt to radio star Greg James.

Which is why the reported venue, Chateau Marmont, is the perfect location for the Healy-Bechtel wedding.

Opened in 1929, the establishment is a symbol of Old Hollywood’s party scene, having housed the likes of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor - a figure Ms Swift heavily identifies with, even naming a song after the late superstar.

With a dark and chequered history, it is perhaps most famed as the hotel where the comedian and actor, John Belushi, died of a drug overdose in 1982.

For Gabbriette, the venue is an obvious choice. She has syled herself as Gen Z’s answer to 90s ‘heroin chic’.

Known for her bleached or ultra-thin brows, smudged eyeliner and dark, edgy makeup, the 28-year-old was the main inspiration for the aesthetic behind Charli XCX’s hit album Brat that swept the globe in 2024.

When Healy got down on one knee and proposed with the custom black diamond, Gabbriette announced the engagement by sharing a picture of her hand on Instagram with the caption: ‘Marry the 1975 is very brat’.

Gabbriette showed off her party-girl credentials during her Las Vegas hen-do. The model chartered a private jet to Sin City and shared pictures of herself handcuffed and posing in a car wearing a vintage white Chanel tweed skirt suit and matching bag and heels.