The star wedding of billionaire Jeff Bezos will take place in Venice. What you need to know

The grand wedding of billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and former journalist Lauren Sanchez will take place in Venice in the coming days. The celebration will last three days and will be attended by many star guests. At the same time, there are protests in the city itself against an excessively expensive ceremony. How the wedding will go and who will become the wife of one of the richest people in the world is in the Izvestia digest.

How will the wedding go?

• On the part of Bezos and Sanchez, the details of the wedding in Venice are not disclosed. All information about her, as a rule, comes from the media, which cover the lives of celebrities. The grandiose event is expected to take place over three days, from June 26 to 28. The first celebrations will take place on Thursday, the next day the couple will exchange vows, and a large-scale party is planned for Saturday.

• Plans to hold a wedding in Venice in March have been confirmed by Mayor Luigi Brugnaro. He noted that the celebration would bring the city "millions of euros." At that time, it was already known that the couple had booked the best and most expensive hotels in Venice for the end of July, and at the same time rented an entire fleet of water taxis to transport guests along the canals. The newlyweds themselves planned to arrive in Venice on Bezos' yacht worth $ 500 million. The budget of the wedding itself is estimated at $46-56 million.

• The press condemned the various options for where the wedding ceremony would take place in Venice. It was assumed that the couple would choose the Doge's Palace on St. Mark's Square, one of the main attractions of the city. Other possible options for the newlyweds were the Arsenal, where the Naval Historical Museum is now located, and the Cannaregio area, which is full of Venice nightlife. As a result, Bezos and Sanchez decided to exchange rings on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, located in the lagoon, where the 16th-century basilica of the same name is located. Saturday's party will probably take place at the Armory.

• The wedding is expected to be attended by many stars and celebrities. Kim Kardashian, Leonardo DiCaprio, Katy Perry, Oprah Winfrey, Lady Gaga, Barbra Streisand, Eva Longoria, Mick Jagger have received invitations. Ivanka, the daughter of US President Donald Trump, and her husband Jared Kushner have already arrived in Venice. In total, about 250 guests are expected to attend.

Who is Lauren Sanchez?

Lauren Sanchez was born in 1969 in Albuquerque, Bezos' hometown. She is a third-generation Mexican. Sanchez studied acting, public speaking, and communication at three different colleges. During her studies, she was diagnosed with dyslexia, which is why she actively advocates for those who have problems reading.

• Sanchez has achieved fame in the United States as a correspondent and presenter of news programs on various TV channels of the Fox media corporation. In 1999, she and her team of journalists won the Emmy Award. Due to her popularity, Sanchez regularly appears in films and TV series in cameo roles as a reporter — her filmography includes "Fight Club", "The Day After Tomorrow", "We Bought a Zoo", "Storming the White House", "The Third Extra 2".

At the age of 40, Sanchez trained as an airplane and helicopter pilot. She inherited her love of flying from her father, who owned a flight school. In 2016, Sanchez founded her own airline, which provides aerial photography services for film and television. In this role, she advised director Christopher Nolan before filming Dunkirk. In 2025, Sanchez organized and participated in an all-female suborbital flight on the New Shepard spacecraft of Blue Origin, owned by Bezos.

In 2001, Sanchez gave birth to her first son with American football player Tony Gonzalez. In 2005, she married Hollywood agent Patrick Whitesell, with whom she also had a son and a daughter. 13 years after the wedding, a publication in the tabloid The National Enquirer revealed the affair between Sanchez and Bezos. It was assumed that Whitesell was the informant of the publication who provided the correspondence and photographs, as he himself intended to achieve a divorce, but he denied this claim.

Why is the wedding criticized

• The wedding of Bezos and Sanchez in Venice is accompanied by active protests by local residents. Although the city is very popular with newlyweds due to its romantic atmosphere, and in 2014 it already hosted George Clooney's star wedding to human rights activist Amal Alamuddin, this time activists organized an entire campaign against the ceremony. They are unhappy that the wedding will damage the ecology of Venice, raise housing prices and cause an exorbitant burden on the urban economy — for the same reasons, residents criticize tourists.

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• A few days before the wedding, a banner was stretched in St. Mark's Square with a smiling Bezos and the inscription: "If you can rent Venice for your wedding, then you can pay more taxes." The phrase is a reference to the Amazon scandal — in Italy, the company is accused of tax evasion for $ 1.2 billion, in 2024 it has already paid $ 121 million during the investigation of tax fraud. The protesters also threatened to block Venice's canals with inflatable crocodiles.

• The wedding organizers assured that the opinion of the locals was heard. According to them, Bezos donated $1 million to preserve the Venetian Lagoon, instructed to minimize interference in urban life, employ local residents at the wedding (the number of staff is expected to reach 500 people) and present souvenirs purchased in Venice to the guests.