Your English teacher and your gym teacher wore Dior: Jonathan Anderson, the Northern Irish creative director of Dior, has been revealed as the designer of haute couture wedding looks for Taylor Swift and her new husband, Travis Kelce.

Photographs have not yet been released, with Swift’s team in charge of timing, but a Dior statement confirmed that Swift is the first bride for whom Anderson, who joined Dior last year, has created an haute couture gown.

A French fashion house was a surprise choice at the most all-American of weddings on Friday. The union of America’s pop sweetheart and her NFL superstar beau took place at Madison Square Garden in the centre of New York City over the Fourth of July weekend.

In the Swiftie universe of visual clues and hidden meanings, this seemed to point to the singer, whose intimate 2020 documentary was titled Miss Americana, would choose an American designer for the dress. Swift and Kelce wore Ralph Lauren, New York fashion week’s greatest salesman of the American dream, for their engagement announcement last year.

The bride and groom’s looks, created in close collaboration with the couple, were handmade in the Dior ateliers in Paris. Their bespoke shoes, by Christian Louboutin, and Swift’s jewellery, by Cartier, were also French.

The Dior dress is an unexpectedly high-fashion choice for Swift, whose megastardom is built on her genius for singalong relatability. Dior is one of the grandest names in fashion, while Swift is unusual among her peers in pop culture for almost never attending fashion shows. Jonathan Anderson is a high-concept, avant garde designer; Swift is the ultimate girl next door. However, in the months before the wedding, Swift was seen carrying Dior handbags on several occasions.

The most eye-catchingly contemporary element of the announcement was that the Dior spotlight shone equally across wedding looks for the couple, rather than focusing on the bride. Fashion and style are at least as important to Kelce, who recently announced a collaboration with Tommy Hilfiger, as they are to Swift.

Dressing what is seen as America’s royal wedding is a huge coup for Dior. Chanel appointed new designer Matthieu Blazy about the same time Anderson joined Dior, locking the two houses into an era of unspoken but heated rivalry. Chanel scored a big win by dressing Dua Lipa for her wedding last month, but Swift’s Dior dress overshadows that in scale of coverage. Next week, the two houses will present their next collections within 24 hours of each other at Paris haute couture fashion week.