In the 1991 documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare, the legendary pop star’s private moments and conversations were filmed in black and white, giving an intimate and personable feel to the once-prickly diva. Concert footage, however—where Madonna was Madonna—appeared in the film in color, the spectacle of her fame (and all of its artifice) on full display.
Would you believe me if I told you that Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker’s wedding special, Kourtney and Travis: Till Death Do Us Part, uses this exact same gimmick? Of course you would. This is, after all, the nuptials of the woman who has an offshoot of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop called Poosh. Originality isn’t exactly the top priority here.
However much you might detest or adore the Kardashians—I, myself, am always treading water, somewhere in the middle—you cannot deny that they are givers. They ceaselessly churn out content, on a production model that most legitimate factories and steel mills couldn’t compete with. Like the Real Housewives or a kitchen essential leafy green such as spinach, you’ll sometimes get a shockingly rotted batch. But most of the time, they’re pretty reliable. Sometimes they might even produce something worth paying attention to.
Whether Kourtney and Travis: Till Death Do Us Part is that thing is up for argument. It certainly does make for an interesting character study of these two lovebirds. The entire affair is so schmaltzy, so dipped in a level of priceless gold that neither you nor I could ever imagine attaining, that it’s actually pretty compelling. Even if all of it is happening under the most inane circumstances imaginable, in the form of a wedding so lavish it’s straight out of the pages of Vogue, it’s still fun to be a little Stockholm Syndrome’d now and again.
The 72-minute affair (I know, a big ask) begins with Kourt and Trav blitzed out of their gourds at a wedding chapel in Vegas. It’s the first of three ceremonies documented in the special, and it’s certainly the most chaotic. If you suffered through the hijinks-lacking lows of the last season of The Kardashians as I did, you’ll remember that the couple had spoken about this super-secret, impromptu ceremony before. But hearing about it and seeing it are two very different things.
Kourtney can’t seem to believe that they’ve arrived somewhere on the outskirts of the Vegas Strip to be married. It’s so crazy. That’s why thousands of people do it every year! Kourt’s got a drink in hand on the way there, and she’s feeling fine. But when they arrive, and an Elvis impersonator accidentally calls her Khloé, Kourtney falls to the ground in a state of pure hysteria. Maybe Kris Jenner gave Kourtney one of her edibles that night, who knows!
As the special segues into their second wedding, I found myself wondering why this is all coming out now. The Vegas ceremony happened in April 2022, and their follow-up was a low-key Santa Barbara courthouse affair just a couple of weeks later. Even the extravagant third, and final, wedding is coming up on its one-year anniversary. These events even predate the timeline of Season 2 of The Kardashians’ end!
After mulling it over for a bit, I don’t think there’s a particularly legitimate reason that Till Death Do Us Part is arriving a year late. It’s just another in a long line of Kardashian attempts to inundate the world with content, rendering us numb and helpless, too stunned to question the date of filming versus the time of release.
All that said, I was a bit touched that Kourtney and Travis had a second wedding at all. The couple had to make their marriage valid in the eyes of the Californian government, as their upcoming Italian ceremony wouldn’t be legal in America. And although it was done out of necessity, it served another purpose, too. Travis’ father, Randy, and Kourtney’s grandmother, the icon and legend MJ, couldn’t travel to Italy for health reasons. Both Randy and MJ were present in Santa Barbara, grounding the experience in a sweet way that the first and last weddings didn’t have. Sure, it’s not a star-studded European affair, but I would’ve liked to spend more time there, without all the glamorous affectations.
But we’re tuning in for love’s window dressings, and that’s why we simply must be thrust over to Italy. The couple’s Portofino wedding was more celebration than ceremony. At one point, Kourtney and Travis take a yacht and multiple dinghies over to a chapel where I was sure they would be “wed,” only for them to be photographed 1,000 more times by Ellen von Unwerth. “We needed really specific documents [to be married in the chapel], or had to do a one-year Catholic course,” Kourtney said. Surely, using the Catholicism’s aesthetic for wedding album photos was exactly the kind of pomp and circumstance the church was trying to avoid by requiring they actually prove their dedication.
As Kim, Khloé, Kris, Kendall, and Kylie all arrive—along with Barker’s children—my eyes began to widen. I’ll admit, there is some delightful, luxurious quality to this whole shebang. Against the backdrop of the Adriatic Sea, I was reminded of the lost art of showmanship and excess. This is the kind of thing you used to see in 20-page Vogue spreads, which has (rightfully) fallen out of favor, especially as we careen toward recession. Try as I might, it’s difficult not to fall in love with the glamorous sight of the Kardashians climbing palatial stairs, walking through hordes of paparazzi, and dressed in designer duds for homemade pasta dinners.
Well, until the real purpose of this special was revealed.
Kourtney and Travis: Till Death Do Us Part is a covert advertisement for Dolce & Gabbana, the disgraced design duo the Kardashians have been trying to lift back into public favor. The designers made all the garments for the Kardashians—including Kourtney’s dress—and the wedding was hosted on their enormous property. If the Kardashians were zeroed out and couldn’t afford zilch, it still wouldn’t be an excuse for them to do favors for these horrific men. But they have all the money in the world. They don’t need Dolce & Gabbana. The designers’ entire presence casts a stain on the special.
As soon as it became clear that this was a ruse for Dolce & Gabbana to move into wedding planning (or something—the machinations of everyone involved with this special are beyond me), I was mostly checked out. Well, for all but two pivotal moments.
The first was Kourtney explaining how difficult it was to get everything to Dolce & Gabbana’s private island. “We had to have parts of the piano flown in by helicopter.” Cut to three incredible shots of a helicopter flying through the sky with a literal grand piano hanging from a rope underneath it, looking like it was being medevaced for a classical music injury. The shot of it cutting through the clouds was so blisteringly hysterical—and such a testament to what these turbulent rich people do right—that I began to laugh so hard I cried. Tears fell down my face as I watched a fucking piano being airlifted to an island. Maybe the Kardashians haven’t lost their touch after all.
The second moment that I briefly checked back in was just before the ceremony, when Travis calls his father to tell him that he loves him and that he wishes they could be together for the moment. That single, brief aside was enough to fleetingly tear down all of the artifices of these proceedings. It only lasts a second, but it’s the most potent second of pure love in a 72-minute special, supposedly dedicated to that same emotion. All the showy pretense in the world can’t overshadow the love found in the details.
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