The wedding of Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz and the lawsuits
In 2022, one of the celebrity weddings, that of Brooklyn Beckham (son of celebrity footballer David Beckham and model Victoria Beckham) and Nicola Peltz (daughter of the millionaire Nelson Peltz and Claudia Peltz), took place.
This all started at a Halloween dinner party organized by Leonardo DiCaprio. The rumors regarding their romance started making the rounds when both Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz were spotted together there.
But it was not until one year after their relationship that Beckham confirmed that he and Nicola Peltz started dating in late October 2019, when he celebrated their first anniversary in October 2020. After this, they publicly announced their engagement on Instagram in July 2020. Such a beautiful relationship was it that Nicola Peltz even wrote that Beckham made her the “luckiest girl in the world”.
Both tied the knot in April 2022 at the Peltz family’s lavish home in Palm Beach, Florida. Though it should have been one of the most celebrated weddings of the year, it was marred by controversy too.
Nelson and Claudia tried to rope in a famous wedding planner, Preston Bailey, to organize and plan the lavish wedding of Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz. Preston, however, backed down and distanced himself from the famous project just six weeks before the wedding. When contacted, Preston confessed that after being 11 months into the job, he thought that he could not deliver the quality that he used to do before and hence thought that he may have overcommitted.
Frustrated by the situation, Nelson and Claudia hurriedly approached Nicole Braghin and Arianna Grijalba from the Plan Design Events (PDE) company to get the job done.
But, soon after hiring them within nine days, Nelson Peltz, the father of Nicola Peltz and a billionaire, fired them from the job, citing inefficiency and mishandling of the guest list, which included celebrities, dignitaries and other highly influential people.
He later filed a lawsuit against PDE (Plan Design Events) Company in December 2022. Nelson sued the company for the payment of $159,000, which he claimed to have made before he fired them from the job and which they refused to pay back.
Now, what turned things into such a situation where the Nelson family got engaged in a legal battle with the company?
The truth came out through a documentary, “Peltz Beckhams vs. The Planners,” which was the original lawsuit filed by Nelson Peltz. In the documentary, one expert is known to say that “Nicola comes across as a nightmare bride. Exactly the sort of person you don’t want having your phone number.”
The situation turned more serious when Nicole Braghin and Arianna Grijalba filed a countersuit against the Peltz family, in which they cited a “breach of contract’ and interference in a business deal” by the said family. They demanded compensation for the losses and against the costs incurred for the same. In the countersuit, they named Nelson, Nicola and her mother Claudia, along with a designer, in the filing.
The company PDE, which was run by Braghin and Grijalba, started working only on Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz’s wedding project, as claimed by the documentary. After just nine days had passed since the deal, Nelson Peltz fired them from the job. However, according to them, the Peltz family was very difficult to work with during the entire time they were working for the family.
They provided evidence in the form of screenshots of the chat messages exchanged between the company and the Peltz family. As per them, Nicola Peltz was too busy to speak to them on the phone during the entire time of their stint with her. Allegedly, she was not happy with the floral arrangements, for they were not white enough. The documentary alleged that the entire time, the Peltz family was only worried about Victoria Beckham finding out about any mistakes in the planning. Overall, the documentary shared that over 12 hours, 258 text messages were exchanged in the group chat with the wedding planners.
Moreover, Nicola Peltz was alleged to be obsessed with the guest list only, which made things difficult for them. The documentary report said, “Both Claudia and Nicola had insisted that Victoria Beckham could not know about any internal mistakes regarding the ongoing planning of her son’s wedding, including any errors with the guest list.” Both Grijalba and Braghin accused Nelson of “acting like a billionaire bully” after being asked about their being fired.
The guest list included Eva Longoria, Serena Williams, and Venus Williams, as well as David Beckham’s former Spice Girl bandmates Mel C and Mel B. Gordon Ramsay, Gigi Hadid, Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen, Brady’s wife at the time and many more. After having taken over the guest list, the Peltz family was reported to get the list changed quite frequently, which brought chaos to the wedding planning.
In the documentary, both Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz were called out in one way or another. Brooklyn was called the “ultimate nepo baby” who hasn’t quite found his calling in life. His failed soccer career, along with his unsuccessful modeling and cooking stints, was also mentioned in the documentary. Likewise, it mentioned that “before Nicola’s relationship with Brooklyn, she did not have the celebrity status that she does now.”. The documentary hinted at Nicola Peltz being “obsessed” with the celebrity status the Beckhams brought to the wedding.
However, in the lawsuit as presented in the first part of the document, Nelson Peltz alleged both Braghin and Grijalba hoodwinked him into thinking they could handle a wedding of this caliber. As per his lawyers, “The celebrity of the wedding couple combined with the anticipated attendance of many high-profile guests required that the wedding planner have the expertise and staffing to plan, coordinate and execute a wedding event of the expected caliber and complexity.”
Finally, in the end, both parties settled and agreed to end the legal battle. As part of the settlement, PDE was to donate in the names of Nicola and Brooklyn to the CARE Ukraine Crisis Fund.
