Taylor Ward and Riyad Mahrez scored a wedding hat-trick when they tied the knot for a third and final time in a lavish ceremony at Italy’s luxurious Lake Como surrounded by 150 friends and family.
Now Riyad Mahrez has told Taylor Ward he “wants a football team” of children and the couple are focusing on adding to their family, which includes their daughter Mila, two, plus Riyad’s daughters, Ayla and Inaya, from his first marriage to model Rita Johal. “Riyad would love a football team,” says Taylor, 27. “He’s a brilliant dad. He needs more kids, that’s for sure.”
Influencer Taylor, who is the daughter of Real Housewives Of Cheshire star Dawn Ward and former footballer Ashley Ward, first married footballer Riyad in 2022 in an intimate Muslim ceremony at home, before the pair legally became husband and wife at The Londoner Hotel surrounded by 30 of their closest family and friends in September 2023. Their lavish final ceremony was in July 2024, just days after Mila’s second birthday.
“I have three sisters, so I want to give Mila the same. I want her to have a big family,” says Taylor, who has a very close bond with her glamorous sisters Darby, Charlie and Aston. Mila will turn three in July and Taylor says she finally feels ready to embark on another pregnancy – and spend sleepless nights with her newborn.
“I’ve got to carry the children and do the pregnancy, which is not easy,” says Taylor. “The newborn stage is a lot more challenging than people think. Those sleepless nights are probably what’s made me hold off having another one straight away. But I’m definitely more ready now than I ever have been.”
Like every new mum, the sleepless nights with Mila took their toll on Taylor. “Even when you think you’ve just got it all under control and they’re sleeping through the night, two weeks later it might change, and they start waking up again and you think, ‘Oh, this is just never ending,’” shares Taylor.
Of course with a husband earning an estimated £44 million a year playing for Saudi Pro League club Al-Ahli, Taylor has a nanny plus staff to help around their gorgeous home, but she maintains she’s still a very hands-on mum. “I do have a nanny and I do have house help but we live abroad,” explains Taylor.
“I don’t have any of my family, I don’t have any of Riyad’s family in Saudi so we have zero family support,” explains Taylor. “So I do have help, but I am very hands-on. Me and Mila, we have a very, very close bond and she just wants her mother. You can have 10 nannies, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t make your role as a parent any less.”
Riyad would love a son to add to their family but Taylor says he’s a brilliant girl dad and it melts her heart watching him caring for his three daughters. “Riyad grew up with two sisters and a brother and he’s got three daughters so he’s used to being around women,” says Taylor.
“When I see him with his daughters it just works so perfectly to the point where now, as much as he would love a little boy, I think he’s so good at being a girl dad that I just can’t imagine him with a little boy now. He’s just so caring and so understanding and loving. He’s just really good with his girls and he’s just a really good dad.”
Before embarking on a second pregnancy, Taylor wanted to have her old breast implants removed after struggling with their size while she was expecting Mila. “When I was pregnant the first time, it made my pregnancy a lot more difficult,” says Taylor.
“Boobs get bigger again when you’re pregnant and they caused me so much pain and so many problems. I always knew that I needed to sort them before I had another child because it just drove me insane.”
Taylor was just 21 when she had her first boob job, but as she got older she started to feel less comfortable with her implants. “When I was 21 I was a lot skinnier, I was a lot smaller and I didn’t have much boobs, so I had implants. Then my body developed and I’m definitely a lot curvier now than I used to be,” says Taylor.
“I’ve had children and your body just changes so much and it didn’t really feel like they fit my body any more. They got to a size where they were causing me loads of problems. They didn’t have bras in my size because they were so big. I used to wear sports bras everywhere. I just wanted to make them a lot more natural.”
Taylor allowed Prime Video to accompany her for the surgery and fans will see her undergo the operation in the second series of Married To The Game . The surgery came before her dream wedding. Even though she spent two and half years planning the event, her operation meant Taylor left choosing her iconic wedding dress to the very last minute.
“I was so unorganised with my dress,” shares Taylor. “I had this one dress in mind and there’s a showroom in Dubai, and I thought I’d just go to try it on and that was the dress I was having. So I left it till really late before the wedding. And then when it came to trying it on, I didn’t like it. I wasn’t keen on the material and it just wasn’t anything like the pictures.”
With five months to go before the wedding, Taylor began to worry. “I just went into complete panic mode,” she says. “Luckily my sister gave me the contact of a dress designer in Istanbul, Turkey, called Rasit Bagzibagli. He’s amazing. I gave him a call and he was just so calm. He literally pulled together exactly what I wanted. I was really lucky with that one.”
Married To The Game viewers will see the moment Taylor walks down the aisle with her dad towards Riyad, who watches on emotionally. “It was really special,” says Taylor lighting up as she relives her wedding day. “You envision that moment for so long but when you’re actually living it… my adrenaline was pumping, I was nervous, I was excited, and it was just amazing. I didn’t think I’d be nervous.
I was so calm all morning. And then as soon as I heard the music play, I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s happening!’ It’s such a special memory. That was probably my favourite part of the day. And the vows and all that kind of stuff. It was really special to see everyone’s faces when I walked down the aisle.”
Married To The Game stars both Taylor and Riyad and the strong bond between them is clear but they’re not as tactile as some of the couples on the show, which also stars Cat Harding and Jorginho, Claudia Rodríguez and Marc Cucurella, Gabrielle Figueiredo and Gabriel Magalhães, and Stephanie Hope and Leon Bailey.
“When people first meet Riyad, he’s quite closed off and it takes a while to understand him as a person,” says Taylor. “Behind closed doors, he’s such a loving person and he cares so much about his family and his friends, and he always puts us first. He’s just got a really nice way of making the people that he loves feel special. I think he’s so caring and his loving nature is what I love most about him.”
With his dry sense of humour, Riyad can be very blunt and that reminds Taylor of her mum Dawn, who found fame as a star of The Real Housewives Of Cheshire . “Riyad’s humour is very dry,” says Taylor. “It takes people off guard to start with because anything he says is just so painfully honest but that’s what I love about him as well.
“When him and my mum are together it’s hilarious because they’re both the exact same. They’re both so painfully honest and truthful. He’s always going to say what he thinks and what’s on his mind. I love that about him.”
Dawn’s parents will celebrate 30 years of marriage this year and Taylor is hoping her marriage is just as strong. “Riyad’s a very strong character as well,” says Taylor. “My parents have been married for 30 years this year, so if we could have 30 years plus, then that would be amazing and I really, truly believe that we will.”
While Taylor is a self-confessed hot-head who can be very emotional, she finds Riyad keeps her calm. “Riyad is a very easy person to be married to and we really complement each other because I’m probably more hot-headed nature whereas he’s very chill,” explains Taylor.
“Whenever I get loud about something, he brings me back down because he’s not the type to shout or raise his voice or get mad. We really even each other out in that sense, which is good.” The pair are currently living in Saudi but Taylor thinks they’ll eventually settle in Dubai where her mum and dad live.
“I absolutely love Manchester, it’s my home so it will always have a massive place in my heart,” says Taylor. “But Riyad’s from Paris originally so Manchester is not his home and I wouldn’t want to live in Paris… so I think somewhere like Dubai would be a really nice place for us to settle. Riyad’s Muslim and he speaks Arabic and my family live out there. The schools and everything are amazing but it depends what he does after football and where that takes us.”
For Taylor, wherever Riyad and their “football team” of children are, that’s her home. “As long as we’re all together, we’ll be happy,” she smiles.
Series two of Married To The Game starts on Prime Video on April 8. Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Threads.
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