The extravagant wedding celebration of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and former broadcast journalist Lauren Sánchez reached its grand finale on Friday night, as Sánchez confirmed the couple had officially wed with an Instagram post. In the photo, she beams in a lacy white wedding gown beside a tuxedo-clad Bezos, captioning the moment under her updated name: Lauren Sánchez Bezos.
The couple exchanged vows during a picturesque ceremony on San Giorgio Maggiore, a lush private island in the Venetian lagoon that faces the historic Doge’s Palace. The pair, along with approximately 200 designer-dressed guests, arrived in style by motorboat as the sun set. At one point, cheers erupted across the lagoon from onlookers, just before Matteo Bocelli, son of renowned tenor Andrea Bocelli, serenaded the crowd with an emotional love ballad.
The wedding marked the second marriage for both Bezos and Sánchez and capped off a three-day celebration that captivated international media and stirred some local controversy. The highly exclusive event attracted a closely guarded guest list of billionaires, celebrities, and power players, many of whom descended on Venice earlier in the week by private jet or yacht.
Among the paparazzi-captured guests were Oprah Winfrey, Barry Diller, and members of the Kardashian-Jenner clan. Hollywood royalty like Leonardo DiCaprio and Orlando Bloom joined the celebration, alongside musical icons such as Usher and Jewel. Even Tom Brady, the NFL legend, made an appearance. From the world of tech, big names like Bill Gates and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, were also in attendance.
Though President Donald Trump did not attend, his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner were present, as were Josh Kushner and Karlie Kloss. Despite occasional friction between Bezos’s Washington Post and the Trump administration, Bezos and Trump have reportedly formed a more cordial relationship in recent years, with Bezos even attending Trump’s second inauguration alongside Sánchez.
The festivities began on Thursday at the Madonna dell’Orto cloister in Venice’s Cannaregio district, though the celebration was briefly disrupted by a sudden storm. Nonetheless, the atmosphere remained opulent throughout the weekend, with five-star hotels like the Aman and Cipriani reserved for guests and security teams managing the flow of paparazzi in gondolas and water taxis around the city.
As one of the world’s richest individuals, with a net worth estimated at $230 billion, Bezos spared no expense. The wedding reportedly cost around $50 million, and he is expected to make several charitable donations in connection with the event, including a €2 million gift to Corila, a research group focused on preserving Venice’s fragile lagoon ecosystem.
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