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Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez’s Wedding in Venice Starts with Celebrities And Protesters

VENICE, Italy – The superyachts are moored up, the private jets have actually touched down and the stars, professional athletes and magnate remain in Venice for one of the most talked-about weddings of the year – that of billionaire Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez.

Oprah Winfrey, Kim and Khloe Kardashian, Tom Brady, Bill Gates and President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner remain in the « city of love, » in addition to Queen Rania of Jordan and Leonardo Di Caprio, for the 3 days of lavish events that started Thursday with a star-studded gala.

Bezos, the world’s fourth-richest male, and Sanchez beamed and waved at members of the public as they marched onto a water taxi ahead of the occasion at the cloisters behind the city’s Chiesa della Madonna dell’Orto church. Nearby, a boat loaded with paparazzi eagerly snapped pictures of the set before they entered the remote venue.

The primary wedding bash will be held Saturday in one of the halls of the Arsenale, a big previous medieval shipyard developed into an art area in the eastern Castello district.

« We are used to managing very crucial occasions, » Deputy Venice Mayor Simone Venturini told NBC News on Wednesday as the city tailored up for the wedding event, including that the city previously hosted the late Pope Francis and world leaders participating in the G7 and G20 summits.

In an earlier interview, he also remembered that the city had actually managed star George Clooney and human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin’s 2014 wedding event, as crowds lined the canals and hundreds of well-wishers collected outside City Hall.

Unlike the Clooney wedding event however, he stated, Bezos’ wedding event would not be legal under Italian law since it needed « to be performed in a main place like the Town hall. » Neither Bezos nor Sanchez, a former TV news anchor, had requested this, he stated.

As an outcome, some have hypothesized that the couple have actually already lawfully wed in the United States.

Not everybody in the city is as inviting as Venturini. In current weeks, there have been protests about the Amazon creator’s in the city, with those who object showing the banner « No Space for Bezos, » a play on words referring to his space exploration business, Blue Origin.

Around a dozen Venetian companies consisting of anti-cruise ship campaigners and housing supporters, have actually been joined by bigger activist groups like Greenpeace, which unfurled a giant tarpaulin in the city’s popular St. Mark’s Square on Monday, with an image of a smiling Bezos below the words: « If you can rent Venice for your wedding you can pay more taxes. »

While authorities quickly got rid of the banner, which Greenpeace said was approximately 4,300 square feet in size, activists have also unfurled a banner on Venice’s well-known Rialto bridge and floated a Bezos-inspired mannequin, its hands clenching phony money, down one of the city’s canals on top of an Amazon shipment box.

Bezos, who according to Forbes has a net worth of $231 billion, stepped down as Amazon CEO in 2021, saying he wanted to invest more time on other jobs, including his Blue Origin space information technology company, The Washington Post and philanthropic efforts.

Two years earlier, Bezos, who generally shies away from the spotlight, announced he was separating his very first other half, Mackenzie Scott, days before the National Enquirer published a story about his affair with Sanchez. On the day Bezos’ divorce was completed, Sanchez declared her own divorce from media executive Patrick Whitesell.

Venturini stated the protesters had actually seen « a lot of paparazzi and a lot of visibility and attention from the world large network and they stated, ‘Let’s exploit this attention.' »

He included that Bezos had made several donations to companies that worked to safeguard the Venetian lagoon system and heritage websites.

In the meantime, it’s company as usual in this city that gets approximately 30 million visitors every year, according to tour guide Igor Scomparin. He said Sunday that it was « challenging » to keep things moving in a city that is only twice the size of New york city’s Central Park.