Jeff Bezos wedding to Lauren Sanchez already a disaster
With the date set and the location announced, the “wedding of the century” is fast becoming a catastrophe for one huge reason.
OPINION
Over the last 1600 years, Venice has survived rampaging Lombards, the Crusades, the Ottomans, the plague, more plague, even more plague, Napoleon and the advent of the British package holiday.
But can it survive the Bezos-Sanchezes?
Like the sailors from east who first arrived in the 14th century itching and wondering why they felt so flu-y, Jeff Bezos, the world’s third-richest person, and his preternaturally pert other half Lauren Sanchez are about to unleash something for the history books on La Serenissima when they stage their June wedding in the watery city.
For a place used to regular gusting storm fronts and natural disasters blowing through their canals and squares, this production will be of another magnitude entirely.
The Bezos-Sanchez wedding is already shaping up to be a disaster – a logistical nightmare of unprecedented proportions for a city that is quite literally cracking.
Take the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people involved.
There are only going to be a comparatively modest 250 guests, but officials confirmed this week that the Bezos show has already booked at least four entire luxury hotels and the more than 100-strong city fleet of water taxis, according to The Times.
Meanwhile, Page Six is reporting that two of the most fabled and expensive hotels, the Gritti Palace and Aman Venice, are completely booked from June 26 to June 29.
“It’s going to be on par with a G7,” a Venice official told The Times this week – only with far more contouring sticks and acai bowls being required.
On the guest list?
Donald and Melania Trump, if he can find her new number, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Queen Rania of Jordan, Kim Kardashian, Oprah Winfrey, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Karlie Kloss and Joshua Kushner, Leonardo DiCaprio, power couple Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, Andrew Garfield, Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom, Eva Longoria, Jewel and countless puffer-vest wearing, Sun Valley-going tech-ligarchs who remember when the groom was a weedy bookseller.
Do any of these people travel even to the supermarket without entire security teams and/or other hangers on?
Just imagine the combined size of the retinues, entourages and children they will be travelling with – and that’s before we have even considered the army of people it will take to stage what will have to be one of the world’s splashiest, most extravagant weddings in history.
Now add in the presidential-level security that Bezos and Sanchez probably travel with, let alone the secret service hoopla that would come with having the actual president and his trusty economy-sized bronzer compact in attendance too.
Next, consider the hundreds if not thousands of caterers, florists, lighting technicians, assistants, makeup artists, hairdressers, patissiers, bakers, bar staff, wait staff, sound mixers, personal trainers, manicurists, chefs, dog handlers, nannies, lawyers, dressers, assistant dressers, assistants to the assistant dressers and whoever is paid to buff Jeff’s head every day who will be toiling away behind the scenes and who will hit Venice too.
Just look at how many staff the bride and groom already need to go on a simple little getaway on their tinnie, the $790 million yacht Koru.
It only sleeps 18 passengers, and yet has 40 staff on board and another 45 support staff that sail behind in a backup vessel.
There will not be any ‘making do’ for the biggest day of their lives since Bezos and Sanchez locked eyes in 2018 and unleashed the greatest love story that the National Enquirer ever tried to blackmail a centi-billionaire over.
And we haven’t even gotten to the press yet.
Imagine the hordes of journalists, photographers, paparazzi and reporting-live TV crews that will assail Venice.
As it was, the 2014 wedding of George Clooney to human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin saw fleets of snappers in boats surrounding them wherever they went and People magazine used drones to track the wedding party across the city.
This will all be happening, mind you, at what is already the height of the tourist season in Venice.
What could possibly go wrong?
The nuptials have been called the “wedding of the century” (sorry, Kate Middleton) and is likely to involve unthinkable amounts of money and ego.
Some poor assistant is already doomed to find themselves standing in a coffee bar at 6am full of amused, always smoking vaporetto drivers sucking back tiny cups of tar-black espresso, as they try and use Google translate to source an oat milk matcha latte.
Buona fortuna, you poor sod you.
What’s nothing short of bananas is that Venice petitioned to host the big day.
Morris Ceron, the director general of Venice’s local council, told a newspaper that Domenico Dolce of Dolce & Gabbana fame had told him about “this marriage of the century” and that he had “worked” to bring it to his city.
Luigi Brugnaro, the mayor of Venice, confirmed they had lobbied for the event, telling The Times, “We were in competition with other places but we won out”.
For the love of Christ, why?
As it is, Venice is buckingly under the weight of the gelato-licking multitudes that sweep through the place like a sweaty aqua alta and stomp away on the millennium-old stones.
A humble 55,000 people still live in Venice – but they are buffeted by 30 million visitors a year.
That’s more than 82,000 every single day – now imagine stacking on top of that, having to worry about where to accommodate Sanchez’s dog’s hairdresser’s assistant and all of Us Weekly’s interns.
Post-Covid, Venice has been getting increasingly desperate in the face of such overwhelm and last year became the first city in the world to charge an entry fee in an attempt to try and slow down tourists-from-Poughkeepsie-invasion.
They are fighting a losing battle so far, with Venetians having put down their aperitivo Camparis long enough to stage a few mass protests against their city becoming an overrun “theme park”.
I struggle to see the Bezosian extravaganza extraordinaire with a cherry on top really respecting the city – rather, they will just use it as a convenient backdrop for their photos and want to try and co-opt the romance of the place.
Smizing is about to take over San Marco.
That usual wedding reading, that one from Corinthians, goes, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud” – none of which I doubt can or will be applied to the Bezos-Sanchez wedding.
Yet the couple are clearly sickeningly, wonderfully in love and those crazy kids might just make it.
But Venice?
I’m not so sure, especially when it turns out they have never heard of almond milk.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles
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