“It begins, as all good fairytales do, with a $10m budget”, a star-studded guest list, and a “megayacht the size of a football pitch”, said Zoë Beaty in The Independent.
In a couple of weeks, Jeff Bezos is set to wed Lauren Sánchez during an opulent three-day celebration in Venice. “But the Adriatic city isn’t swooning – far from it. In fact, the locals are absolutely seething.”
‘A playground for the wealthy’
According to local activists, the Amazon boss is set to turn their hometown into a “playground for the wealthy”. From June 24-26, the “so-called wedding of the year” will see a slew of celebrities descend on Venice in their private jets and yachts, contributing to the historic city’s hefty carbon emissions and sparking “logistical chaos” in a destination already buckling under the pressure of “unchecked tourism”.
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Soaring rents and a city bursting with holiday homes have already led to a “mass exodus of Venetians”. Locals have been campaigning against the damage caused by mammoth cruise ships to the city’s fragile lagoon ecosystem for years. “And, of course, famously, Venice is literally sinking.” Rising sea levels combined with subsidence means it faces extensive threats from flooding. For protestors, Bezos’ “tone-deaf” wedding is the last thing the city needs.
The billionaire and his bride-to-be will be met with “noisy protests” when they cruise into Venice later this month aboard their $500m superyacht, said Nick Squires in The Telegraph. Along with the environmental damage, activists claim the “mega-wedding” will “disrupt daily life for ordinary Venetians” due to the “cordoning-off of public areas” and “blanket booking” of gondolas and water taxis.
But the Venetian mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, says he is “grateful” Bezos has chosen the floating city to host his wedding, stressing the economic benefits of the celebrations and insisting, “Anyone who loves Venice is always welcome”.
‘Relatively humble’
Everyone is expecting a “staggering display of wealth” from the world’s third richest man, said Alison Boshoff in the Daily Mail. However, it appears the nuptials will be lower key than expected. “Modest, even.” With less than 200 guests and a final bill that is rumoured to be under $10m (“loose change” for Bezos), an “impeccably placed source” told the publication the wedding has undergone a “make-under”, with the bride and groom set on “dialling down on the bling”.
Why the “relatively humble” celebration? The answer could, in part, lie in the “PR disaster” of the all-female Blue Origin space flight earlier this year. With Sánchez’s journey to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere largely dismissed as an out-of-touch and “meaningless stunt”, her response is to be “less ‘Marie Antoinette'”.
Still, it’s the biggest event the city has seen since George and Amal Clooney tied the knot at the Aman Venice – a 24-room palazzo overlooking the Grand Canal – back in 2014. The island of San Giorgio Maggiore is “widely tipped” to play a central role in the festivities this time, said Tom Kington in The Times, with the nuptials reported to be taking place at the Fondazione Cini – a former Benedictine monastery.
If the rumours are true, “monks will soon rub shoulders with Trumps” as the US president’s family jets in for the celebration. Set away from the “tourist hordes”, but just a short water taxi ride from St Mark’s Square, the island is a “perfect spot” for the wedding. Nestled amid the cypress trees lies an open-air amphitheatre, ideal for the wedding concert by Sir Elton John and Lady Gaga that Bezos is said to be planning.
For the mega-rich guests, the nuptials will be regarded as a “symbol of success and exclusivity”, said Beaty in The Independent. But as the world’s elite “raise glasses of champagne behind velvet ropes, the locals will be raising something else entirely: placards, voices and a warning from the heart of their ancient, beloved home – that cities like Venice don’t belong to the richest man in the world, no matter how sparkly the ring.”
