Venice: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his journalist fiancée Lauren Sanchez have arrived in Venice for what’s being dubbed the ‘wedding of the century,’ kicking off three days of extravagant celebrations despite mounting criticism from residents.
The wedding festivities are expected to cost between €40 million and €48 million ($46–$56 million) and have drawn high-profile guests from around the world.
Bezos and Sanchez were spotted entering the exclusive Aman Venice Hotel on the Grand Canal, where many celebrity guests will be staying. Around 90 private jets are expected to land at nearby airports this week, bringing A-listers from the realms of entertainment, politics, and finance to the romantic Italian city.
The celebrations begin June 26 evening with an open-air welcome party in the cloisters of the 14th-century Madonna dell’Orto church in the Cannaregio district, an area known for its vibrant nightlife.
Venice City Hall issued a directive to cordon off the area, preventing activists, who have been protesting for weeks, from disrupting the event. Critics argue the wedding turns the historic city into a private playground for the ultra-wealthy.
A local resident Nadia Rigo said that, “There’s only one thing that rules now: money, money, money, so we are the losers. We who were born here have to either move to the mainland or we have to ask them for permission to board a ferry. They’ve become the masters.”
Amid rising tensions, the couple donated €3 million to three local institutions: CORILA, a research consortium focused on the lagoon’s ecosystem; the local office of UNESCO; and Venice International University. The Governor of the Veneto region, Luca Zaia, welcomed the couple and praised the donation as a ‘gesture of extraordinary generosity.’
On June 27, the second celebration will take place on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, located across from Venice’s famed St. Mark’s Square and home to the Cini Foundation. The island’s ancient monastery and gardens, including a renowned maze, are expected to provide a stunning venue for the gathering.
To shield guests from public and media attention, workers at the Aman Venice Hotel erected a striped canvas canopy with side walls on a floating dock, blocking the view of arriving VIPs from photographers and onlookers.
The main wedding celebration is scheduled for June 28, in one of the halls of the Arsenale, a vast medieval shipyard in the Castello district that has been repurposed as a major arts and exhibition space.
Surrounded by water and inaccessible when its connecting bridges are raised, the location offers a high level of privacy and security. It was chosen over an earlier potential venue, a former religious school in Cannaregio, for safety reasons.
Though the wedding date and ceremony venue have not been officially disclosed, speculation suggests Bezos and Sanchez may have already wed in a private ceremony in the United States. Bezos, 61, and Sanchez, 55, got engaged in 2023, four years after Bezos’s 25-year marriage to philanthropist MacKenzie Scott ended.
Their Venice celebration follows in the footsteps of other high-profile weddings in the floating city, such as the 2014 nuptials of actor George Clooney and human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin.
As final preparations unfold, Bezos, now executive chairman of Amazon and ranked No. 4 on Forbes’ billionaire list, has once again captured the world’s attention, this time not for business ventures, but for an opulent wedding that merges love, luxury, and controversy in one of Europe’s most iconic cities.
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