Behind Brooklyn Beckham’s claims about wife’s wedding dress drama with mom

It’s long been rumored that tensions between Brooklyn Beckham and his famous parents, Sir David and Lady Victoria Beckham, grew in the run-up to his April 2022 wedding to heiress Nicola Peltz, especially after his mother reportedly declined to design the bride’s wedding dress.

Now, 26-year-old Brooklyn Beckham is confirming the family feud rumors in an extraordinary Instagram attack on his parents Monday. In a six-page statement, the aspiring chef announced to the world that he had no desire to reconcile with his parents, as he labeled them controlling and excessively focused on “brand Beckham.” He also accused them of trying to ruin his wedding and sabotage his relationship with his 31-year-old actress wife.

But in making certain allegations about his mother’s behavior before and during the wedding, held at the Peltz family’s Palm Beach estate, Brooklyn Beckham also has opened himself to serious fact-checking by online sleuths, according to the BBC. And these sleuths have found that his accusations don’t align with detailed reports about his opulent, star-studded wedding that were published at the time,

First off, Brooklyn Beckham claimed in his bombshell post that his fashion designer mother “cancelled making Nicola’s dress in the 11th hour despite how excited she was to wear her design, forcing her to urgently find a new dress.”

Of course, Nicola Peltz, the daughter of billionaire investor Nelson Peltz and model Claudia Heffner, didn’t have to run out to her local department store at the last-minute and grab the first dress she could find off the rack. She ended up walking down the aisle in a Valentino couture gown.

In fact, at the time, Nicola Peltz denied to the Times that there was a feud with Victoria Beckham, or that she refused to wear one of the former Spice Girls’ designs, the BBC reported. She instead said that her mother-in-law had realized that her atelier would not be able to finish the dress in time so she opted to have her dress made by Valentino.

In the months after the wedding, British Vogue published a lengthy report on the lavish ceremony, sharing glossy, color photos of Nicola Peltz in her Valentino gown, with its show-stopping train. With Vogue’s insider access to the ceremony and the preparations, it reported that the dress actually was in the works for many months, with Nicola and her mother making multiple trips to the Valentino atelier in Rome for the fittings, “over the year-long design process.”

Vogue’s celebrity writer Derek Blasberg also quoted Nicola Peltz as saying that the Valentino choice wasn’t just a dress. “It was a story,” she said. The report furthermore said that the dress, with its “exquisite craftsmanship,” also incorporated “sweet personal details.” One of those details, courtesy of the bride’s mother, was “an evil eye as a talisman,” along with a message “that the Valentino team stitched into the wedding gown using blue thread.”

Entertainment reporter Jodie McCallum told the BBC that the issue over the dress is at the “core” of what reportedly sparked the feud.

“Did Nicola refuse to wear a VB dress?” McCallum said. “Or did — as Brooklyn says — his mother cancel the dress at the last minute, making her rush to organize another dress?”

While McCallum told the BBC it’s hard to know “what really happened,” the Vogue report — along Nicola Peltz’s own account — suggest pretty strongly that there was no “11-hour” cancelation.

Elsewhere in Brooklyn Beckham’s Instagram post, he makes the stunning allegation that Victoria Beckham hijacked his first dance with Nicola, which he said had been planned “weeks in advance” to one of their favorite love songs.

“In front of our 500 wedding guests, Marc Anthony called me to the stage, where in the schedule was planned to be my romantic dance with my wife but instead my mum was waiting to dance with me instead,” Brooklyn Beckham said.

“She danced very inappropriately on me in front of everyone,” he continued. “I’ve never felt more uncomfortable or humiliated in my entire life.”

But Vogue offered a different version of both that dance, and of thee first dance between the bride and groom. Indeed, it said that the newlyweds enjoyed their first dance, after dinner and after his soccer-star father “delivered a heartfelt tribute to his eldest son and his new daughter-in-law.” The couple danced to Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling In Love,” performed by South African artist Lloyiso.

Later on in the evening, “to close out the celebrations,” Marc Anthony took over the DJ duties for the crowd, which included celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, actors Eva Longoria, Rashida Jones and Kiernan Shipka, and filmmakers Michael Bay and M Night Shyamalan. According to Vogue, “at 11 p.m., the circular stage revolved 180 degrees and Marc Anthony magically appeared for a live set that opened with ‘I Need To Know.’”

That’s when Brooklyn Beckham invited his mother on stage for a dance and they were joined by David Beckham and their 10-year-old daughter, Harper, according to Vogue.

Anthony’s last song was a Latin version of the Eagles’s “Hotel California,” after which two doors opened on what was the fourth tent of the night, Vogue reported. Inside was a pop-up nightclub overlooking a moonlit Atlantic Ocean. Victoria’s friend DJ Fat Tony was on the decks.

If Victoria Beckham did any “inappropriate” dancing at her son’s wedding, it was at this point, according to Fat Tony’s partner, Stavros Agapiou, as the Daily Mail reported. In a since-deleted Instagram comment in response to Brooklyn Beckham’s claims about his mother, Agapiou wrote, “I was there and she did, he’s telling the truth.” Agapiou has since replaced that comment with the statement: “Good on him for finally speaking out!”