Sandler’s role prompted some to question whether the ceremony had been Jewish. In reality, across much of the United States, friends can legally officiate weddings after becoming ordained or receiving the necessary authorisation, regardless of the couple’s faith.
In the days leading up to the wedding, there were signs that Sandler would play a role in the wedding itself.
On Thursday, the day before the ceremony, The Sun published grainy footage appearing to show the actor arriving with a bag at a rehearsal dinner held inside Madison Square Garden’s Infosys Theatre.
Sandler and his daughters, Sadie, 20, and Sunny, 17, have also been a long-time fans of Taylor Swift. The family met her at the premiere of her film Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour in October 2023.
“My kids know every Taylor Swift song,” he later told Jimmy Kimmel. “They’ve grown up with every song of hers.”
Appearing on Kelce’s New Heights podcast in early 2025, Sandler described Swift as someone who “means so much to our house”.
He has also admitted to becoming star-struck around the singer, telling Conan O’Brien, the TV host, in 2024 that “I get a little jumpy” around her, because “I don’t want to blow it for my kids. So I’m a little like, ‘Taylor, Taylor,’ and I talk a little too loud.”
Swift herself referred to Happy Gilmore in her own songwriting. Speaking to radio host Zane Lowe last year, she revealed that the film’s “happy place” scene inspired the chorus of Wish Li$t, a song widely believed to be about Kelce from her album The Life of a Showgirl.
“I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie Happy Gilmore, but he has this happy place where he goes into this utopia,” she said. “That chorus of that song is me just describing what my happy place is.”
For a man who once described himself as feeling “jumpy” around Swift, it was an unlikely but fitting role at one of the year’s most closely watched weddings.