Billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Venice wedding ceremony to Lauren Sánchez causes stir

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By DAVID BILLER and PAOLO SANTALUCIA, Related Press

VENICE, Italy (AP) — The sky itself isn’t any restrict for billionaire Jeff Bezos and fiancée Lauren Sánchez, who’ve traveled into area — and expectations are nearly as excessive for his or her wedding ceremony in Venice.

One of many world’s most enchanting cities as backdrop? Verify.

Star-studded guestlist and tabloid buzz? After all.

Native taste? You guess.

Past that, the workforce of the world’s fourth-richest man has saved particulars beneath wraps. Nonetheless, whispers level to occasions unfold throughout the Italian lagoon metropolis, including complexity to what would have been a large logistical enterprise even on dry land.

Dozens of personal jets touched down at Venice’s airport, and yachts pulled into town’s famed waterways. Aboard have been athletes, celebrities, influencers and enterprise leaders, converging to enjoy extravagance that’s as a lot a testomony to the couple’s love as to their extraordinary wealth.

The heady hoopla recalled the 2014 wedding ceremony in Venice of actor George Clooney to human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin, when adoring crowds lined the canals and a whole lot of well-wishers gathered exterior Metropolis Corridor.

Not so for these nuptials, which have develop into a lightning rod for protests.

Nonetheless, any want to dampen the prevailing fever pitch has but to materialize. As a substitute, the glitterati have been set to social gathering, and the paparazzi jostling for glimpses of the gilded gala.

No matter occurs, it is going to be a marriage for the ages.

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Kim Kardashian, heart, and sister Khloé Kardashian, arrive in Venice, Italy, Thursday, June 26, 2025, forward of Jeff Bezos’ wedding ceremony. (AP Photograph/Luigi Costantini)

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Logistics and prices

Venice is famed for its community of canals, the place gondoliers croon for lovestruck {couples} and even ambulances are aquatic. However water transport of the whole lot from bouquets to visitors makes Venice among the many world’s most difficult cities for a celebration, in keeping with Jack Ezon, CEO of luxurious journey advisory and occasion planner Embark Past.

“It’s a really tight-knit neighborhood; everybody there is aware of everybody, and it is advisable work with the suitable folks,” stated Ezon, whose firm has placed on a dozen high-end occasions in Venice. “There’s very tight management, particularly on motion there with boats.”

It at the least triples the associated fee versus staging the identical soiree in Rome or Florence, he stated.

Veneto Gov. Luca Zaia was first to present an estimated tally for the Bezos/Sánchez bash: He advised reporters this week the latest whole he noticed was between 40 million and 48 million euros (as much as $56 million).

It’s an eye-popping, jaw-dropping determine that’s over 1,000 occasions the $36,000 common price of American {couples}’ weddings in 2025, in keeping with wedding ceremony planning web site Zola’s annual report.

Bezos’ workforce has been tight-lipped about the place these thousands and thousands are going. When the youngest son of Asia’s richest man married final July, performances by pop stars Rihanna and Justin Bieber pushed up the value tag.

“How do you spend $40 million on a three- or four-day occasion?” Ezon stated. ”You may deliver headliners, A-list performers, nice DJs from wherever on the earth. You may spend $2 million on an unbelievable glass tent that’s solely there for 10 hours, but it surely takes a month to construct,” or broaden the celebration to native landmarks.

There’s no signal Sánchez and Bezos, the previous CEO of Amazon, intend to take over any of Venice’s tourist-thronged hotspots. Nonetheless, intense hand-wringing in regards to the prospect prompted their wedding ceremony coordinator, Lanza & Baucina, to subject a uncommon assertion calling these rumors false.

On Thursday, a string of water taxis reduce by way of the lagoon to deliver Bezos, Sánchez and visitors to the Madonna dell’Orto cloister as some onlookers cheered. Paparazzi adopted in their very own boats, attempting to seize visitors on digital camera — Oprah Winfrey, Kim Kardashian, Ivanka Trump, Tom Brady, Orlando Bloom — as police on jet skis patrolled.

On Friday afternoon, Sánchez emerged from her resort carrying a silk scarf on her head and blew a kiss to journalists earlier than moving into her water taxi. It carried her by way of the canals to San Giorgio island, throughout the lagoon basin from St. Mark’s Sq., the place the couple is predicted to carry a ceremony later within the day. Related Press journalists circling the island earlier noticed non-public safety personnel stationed at each touchdown level, together with its newly put in dock.

Native media have additionally reported a reception Saturday within the Arsenale, a former navy base finest often known as a major venue for the Venice Biennale.

‘No Area’

There are some who say these two shouldn’t be wed on this metropolis.

They characterize the marriage as a decadent show of wealth in a world with rising inequality, and argue it’s a shining instance of tourism taking priority over residents’ wants, significantly inexpensive housing and important companies. Venice can also be one of many cities most weak to rising sea ranges from local weather change.

“Venice isn’t just a reasonably image, a reasonably postcard to please the wants and desires of the elite or of mass vacationers, however it’s an alive metropolis, made of people that wish to truly reside there,” Stella Faye, a college researcher from Venice, stated on Friday.

A couple of dozen Venetian organizations — together with housing advocates, anti-cruise ship campaigners and college teams — are protesting beneath the banner “No Area for Bezos,” a play on phrases referring to his area exploration firm Blue Origin and the bride’s current area flight.

Greenpeace unfurled a banner in St. Mark’s Sq. denouncing Bezos for paying inadequate taxes. Activists floated a bald-headed Bezos-inspired model down Venice’s Grand Canal atop an Amazon supply field, its arms clenching pretend money.

Authorities — from Venice’s mayor to the nation’s tourism minister — have dismissed the outcry, saying it ignores the visibility and financial enhance the marriage brings.

“There can be images in every single place, social media will go wild over the bride’s gown, over the ceremony,” Italy’s tourism minister, Daniela Santanchè, advised the AP.

“All of this interprets into a large free publicity marketing campaign. In actual fact, as a result of they’ll spend some huge cash, they’ll enrich Venice — our shopkeepers, artisans, restauranteurs, resorts. So it’s an awesome alternative each for spending and for selling Italy on the earth.”

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