Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez’s Wedding in Venice Starts with Celebrities And Protesters
VENICE, Italy – The superyachts are moored up, the personal jets have actually touched down and the stars, athletes and business leaders are in Venice for among the most talked-about wedding events 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 child Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner remain in the “city of love,” together with Queen Rania of Jordan and Leonardo Di Caprio, for the three days of luxurious events that started Thursday with a star-studded gala.
Bezos, the world’s fourth-richest man, 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 filled with paparazzi excitedly snapped photos of the set before they went into the secluded location.
The main wedding event celebration will be held Saturday in one of the halls of the Arsenale, a big previous medieval shipyard turned into an art area in the eastern Castello district.
“We are used to managing really essential occasions,” Deputy Venice Mayor Simone Venturini told NBC News on Wednesday as the city prepared for the wedding, adding that the city previously hosted the late Pope Francis and world leaders participating in the G7 and G20 summits.
In an earlier interview, he likewise remembered that the city had handled star George Clooney and human rights attorney Amal Alamuddin’s 2014 wedding, as crowds lined the canals and hundreds of well-wishers gathered outside City Hall.
Unlike the Clooney wedding event however, he said, Bezos’ wedding event would not be legal under Italian law due to the fact that it required “to be carried out in a main place like the City Hall.” Neither Bezos nor Sanchez, a former anchor, had actually requested this, he stated.
As an outcome, some have actually speculated that the couple have actually already legally wed in the United States.
Not everybody in the city is as inviting as Venturini. In recent weeks, there have been demonstrations about the Amazon founder’s existence in the city, with those who object displaying the banner “No Space for Bezos,” a play on words describing his space exploration company, Blue Origin.
Around a lots Venetian companies including anti-cruise ship advocates and housing supporters, have actually been signed up with by larger activist groups like Greenpeace, which unfurled a huge tarp in the city’s popular St. Mark’s Square on Monday, with a photo of a smiling Bezos beneath the words: “If you can rent Venice for your wedding event you can pay more taxes.”
While cops quickly eliminated the banner, which Greenpeace stated was around 4,300 square feet in size, activists have actually also unfurled a banner on Venice’s popular Rialto bridge and drifted a Bezos-inspired mannequin, its hands clenching fake cash, down one of the city’s canals on top of an Amazon delivery box.
Bezos, who according to Forbes has a net worth of $231 billion, stepped down as Amazon CEO in 2021, saying he wished to invest more time on other projects, including his Blue Origin area technology company, The Washington Post and humanitarian efforts.
Two years earlier, Bezos, who normally shies away from the limelight, announced he was separating his first spouse, Mackenzie Scott, days before the National Enquirer released a story about his affair with Sanchez. On the day Bezos’ divorce was finalized, Sanchez submitted for her own divorce from media executive Patrick Whitesell.
Venturini said the protesters had actually seen “a great deal of paparazzi and a great deal of presence and attention from the world large network and they stated, ‘Let’s exploit this attention.'”
He added that Bezos had actually made numerous donations to organizations that worked to protect the Venetian lagoon system and heritage websites.
In the meantime, it’s company as usual in this city that gets roughly 30 million visitors every year, according to visit guide Igor Scomparin. He said Sunday that it was “hard” to keep things relocating a city that is just twice the size of New York’s Central Park.
