You may not diss the bride. Nicola Peltz Beckham‘s family slammed her former wedding planners in new court documents amid their ongoing legal battle.
In a response filed on Thursday, March 9, and obtained by Us Weekly, the 28-year-old actress’ father, billionaire investor Nelson Peltz, called event coordinators Nicole Braghin and Arianna Grijalba’s lawsuit against the family “malicious and mean-spirited.”
A source exclusively told Us that the former Triangle Industries CEO is “not a litigious man.”
The insider added: “He has not sued anyone in 15 years but when it comes to his daughter, he will protect her always. He is a loving father who engaged in an alleged agreement with a group that couldn’t live up to the experience they sold him – despite the issues, they were able to pull off a once-in-a-lifetime wedding for his daughter.”
The new documents — which come nearly one year after the Bates Motel alum’s April 2022 nuptials to Brooklyn Peltz Beckham — are the latest update in the Peltz family’s legal battle with the Plan Design Events cofounders.
Nelson, 80, filed a lawsuit against the party planning duo in December 2022, claiming that Braghin and Grijalba — who were one of three sets of wedding planners hired for the event — refused to refund him the $159,000 he gave them. The suit alleged that the two women recommended that the Peltz family hire another wedding planner after just nine days of working on the event.
Braghin and Grijabla, for their part, responded with a countersuit of their own in February, accusing the Peltz family of making unreasonable demands on short notice and asking for more than $50,000 in damages. In addition to Nelson and Nicola, the actress’ mother, Claudia Peltz, and wedding designer Rishi Patel are named in the suit.
Among Braghin and Grijabla’s allegations was a claim that the bride was “too busy” to speak to them on the phone. Text messages allegedly exchanged between Nicola and the planners seemingly indicate conflict over the guest list.
“This is not what I asked for. I ASKED FOR OUR INVITE LIST. IN. VITE. NOT. RSVP. Can u manage to send that to me,” one alleged message from the Last Airbender actress reads.
In Nelson’s Thursday filing, he called the countersuit “a good old-fashion shakedown.” The documents also refer to the event planners’ legal strategy as “a desperate effort to distract from their own failure to accomplish anything of substance in the short time they purported to act as replacement wedding planners.”
In the businessman’s initial lawsuit against Braghin and Grijabla, Nelson claimed that the pair exaggerated their abilities as event coordinators.
“Peltz had presented them with the opportunity of a lifetime – to have their names associated with the wedding of two world-famous celebrities, which would undoubtedly propel [Plan Design Events] into wedding planning stardom,” his December 2022 filing argued. “In reality, however, it later became clear that PDE viewed this as an opportunity to take advantage of Peltz by making material misrepresentations on both their website and in person regarding their experience, expertise, and capability of planning the wedding.”
