Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez's star-studded £38 million wedding begins in Venice

A three-day celebration unfolds across Venice’s grandest venues while locals raise concerns over the event’s excess.

Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez

Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez host Venice wedding

Getty Images

Quick highlights:

  • Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez’s wedding celebrations kick off in Venice with around 200 high-profile guests.
  • Celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio, the Kardashians, Oprah, and Bill Gates have arrived.
  • The three-day celebration is expected to cost £43–51 million (₹427–506 crore).
  • Venice locals protest the event, accusing the billionaire couple of turning the city into a playground for the elite.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and media personality Lauren Sánchez have begun their lavish wedding festivities in Venice, Italy, drawing a guest list that reads like the Oscars after-party. The ultra-exclusive, multi-day affair has transformed the floating city into a buzzing hub of private yachts, paparazzi, and tight security.


The couple, who have been engaged since 2023, arrived earlier this week and are hosting a welcome event ahead of their expected Friday wedding ceremony. The celebrations are reportedly set across Venice’s most luxurious venues, with the final reception on Saturday.

Jeff Bezos and Lauren S\u00e1nchez Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos leave the Aman Hotel in Venice ahead of their wedding Getty Images


Celebrities, billionaires, royals: a who’s who of wedding guests

Familiar faces are pouring into Venice. Kim Kardashian made a headline-grabbing entrance at Marco Polo Airport, followed by sisters Khloé, Kendall, and Kylie Jenner, along with matriarch Kris Jenner. Oprah Winfrey, joined by Gayle King, arrived in a summery outfit and was spotted greeting fans as she left her hotel. Leonardo DiCaprio tried to go unnoticed in a baseball cap but was quickly recognised by photographers.

Kardashians seen boarding a boat ahead of the evening celebrations in VeniceGetty Images


Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Tom Brady, Karlie Kloss, Orlando Bloom, and even royalty like Queen Rania of Jordan were seen making their way to the festivities. Guests are staying in top-tier hotels like the Gritti Palace and Aman, where rooms overlook the Grand Canal.

Oprah Winfrey wave to fans while heading to the welcome event Getty Images


Venice residents push back against the mega-event

While the city is buzzing with glamour, not everyone is celebrating. Local activists have criticised the event for highlighting the growing gap between Venice’s global appeal and its local struggles. A protester scaled a flagpole in St Mark’s Square, unveiling a banner reading, “The 1 per cent ruins the world,” targeting the excessive nature of the celebration.

Jeff Bezos and Lauren S\u00e1nchez Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez gesture in direction of Bezos' lookalike from the taxi boatGetty Images


The wedding, estimated to cost between £43–51 million (₹427–506 crore), may not dent Bezos’s £182 billion (₹18.1 lakh crore) fortune, but it has sparked debates about overtourism and inequality in one of Europe’s most fragile heritage cities.

More For You

Samir Zaidi

Two Sinners marks Samir Zaidi’s striking directorial debut

Samir Zaidi, director of 'Two Sinners', emerges as a powerful new voice in Indian film

Indian cinema has a long tradition of discovering new storytellers in unexpected places, and one recent voice that has attracted quiet, steady attention is Samir Zaidi. His debut short film Two Sinners has been travelling across international festivals, earning strong praise for its emotional depth and moral complexity. But what makes Zaidi’s trajectory especially compelling is how organically it has unfolded — grounded not in film school training, but in lived observation, patient apprenticeships and a deep belief in the poetry of everyday life.

Zaidi’s relationship with creativity began well before he ever stepped onto a set. “As a child, I was fascinated by small, fleeting things — the way people spoke, the silences between arguments, the patterns of light on the walls,” he reflects. He didn’t yet have the vocabulary for what he was absorbing, but the instinct was already in place. At 13, he turned to poetry, sensing that the act of shaping emotions into words offered a kind of clarity he couldn’t find elsewhere. “I realised creativity wasn’t something external I had to chase; it was a way of processing the world,” he says. “Whether it was writing or filmmaking, it came from the same impulse: to make sense of what I didn’t fully understand.”

Keep ReadingShow less