The location of Jeff Bezos’s highly-anticipated second wedding was apparently given away by the mayor of Venice after he boasted the celebrations will generate millions for the city.
The billionaire founder of Amazon is to tie the knot with his fiancee Lauren Sáchez, a former television journalist, amid the cupolas, spires, stone bridges and squawking seagulls of Venice, according to Luigi Brugnaro.
“This event will bring economic returns of millions of euros to the city,” Mr Brugnaro said on Thursday.
The three-day celebration, which will take place between June 24 and 26 promises to be a bonanza for hoteliers, restaurant owners, water taxi drivers and gondoliers.
It will be the biggest celebrity wedding in the World Heritage city since George Clooney married human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin a decade ago.
The guest list for the Bezos nuptials reportedly includes Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her property developer husband Jared Kushner, Kim Kardashian, the actress Eva Longoria, British actor Orlando Bloom and his fiancée, pop star Katy Perry, and Oprah Winfrey.
According to reports in Italy, Venice’s entire fleet of water taxis has already been reserved by the couple to ferry their guests around, and the top hotels are fully booked, from the legendary Gritti Palace to the Danieli and the Belmond Hotel Cipriani.
A suite with a Grand Canal view at the Gritti Palace costs more than €9,000 (£7,500) a night in June.
At the Hotel Danieli, a luxury room with a view of the lagoon costs around €4,000 (£3,300) a night.
The nuptials will be organised by a British event organiser, Lanza & Baucina, according to the Italian press. The London firm has a reputation for organising grand events for the super wealthy and prides itself on its discretion.
“We have worked on every continent and are responsible for masterminding the world’s most exclusive, private and spectacular parties,” the agency says on its website. “Discretion is paramount to us. We have no social media presence and no examples of previous work are published.” One of the founders of the company is said to own a house in Venice.
Money will presumably be no object for Mr Bezos, who is ranked by Forbes the second richest person on the planet, with a fortune valued at $218bn (£168bn).
He and his fiancée are expected to arrive in Venice on board his yacht, which cost $500m (£386m) to build. It is named the Koru, which is a Maori word for loop or coil.
Sporting three huge masts, it is the largest sailing yacht in the world at 410ft in length and costs around $30 million a year to run.
There is feverish speculation over where the wedding will take place. One venue being touted is the Palazzo Ducale or Doge’s Palace, the Gothic-arched former seat of the doges who ran Venice as a maritime trading power for nearly 1,000 years.
Or it may be that Mr Bezos opts for the Arsenal, a historic complex of slipways, boat sheds, workshops and canals where for generations the Venetians built their warships.
Another option is said to be the Fondazione Cini, a cluster of picturesque stone cloisters, courtyards and bell towers on the island of San Giorgio in the lagoon. Once known as the Isola dei Cipressi or Island of Cypresses, San Giorgio evolved into an important Benedictine monastery.
The nuptials come two years after Mr Bezos, 61, proposed to 55-year-old Ms Sánchez. He gave her a 20-carat diamond ring reportedly worth $2.5 million. Ms Sánchez later said she had “blacked out a bit” when she first saw the ring.
“We’re still thinking about the wedding, what it’s going to be. Is it going to be big? Is it going to be overseas? We don’t know yet. We’ve only been engaged five months,” she said previously.
They held an engagement party in August 2023 on board the Koru, anchored off Positano on the Amalfi Coast, with the guest list including Queen Rania of Jordan, Bill Gates, Leonardo DiCaprio and Spiderman actor Tobey Maguire.
The Amazon founder and owner of The Washington Post had four children with his first wife, MacKenzie Scott, but they divorced in 2019 after 25 years of marriage.
Ms Sánchez has two children with her first husband, Patrick Whitesell.