When Jeff Bezos tied the knot with Lauren Sánchez in a three-day Venice extravaganza that reportedly cost over $50 million, the internet had opinions. From celebrity guests complaining about the heat to protesters unfurling banners along the canals, this wasn’t your typical billionaire wedding. Between the unusual gift bags, the exhausted A-listers, and the aesthetic choices that have people raising eyebrows, there’s a lot more going on here than meets the eye. The world’s third-richest man could have married anyone, anywhere, but the choices he made reveal something strange about life at the very top.
The wedding got kicked out of Venice’s city center
Most couples worry about whether their wedding playlist is any good or if Aunt Susan will get along with the in-laws. Jeff Bezos had to worry about an entire city mobilizing against him. The original venue was supposed to be the Scuola Grande della Misericordia, a gorgeous 16th-century meeting hall right in the heart of Venice, surrounded by canals where guests would arrive by water taxi in full view of everyone. Local residents were not having it.
A protest group called No Space for Bezos threatened to disrupt guest arrivals with inflatable alligators and pool floats. That’s right—the man worth $223 billion got scared off by people with pool toys. Bezos changed the venue to a less accessible location outside the city center. Another group unfurled a massive banner in Piazza San Marco reading, “If you can rent Venice for your wedding then you can pay more tax.” The locals made it crystal clear that just because you can afford to buy anything doesn’t mean you’re welcome everywhere.
Guests were exhausted and the heat made everything worse
Looking at the glossy photos of Kim Kardashian, Oprah, and Leonardo DiCaprio gliding through Venice in designer outfits, you’d think everyone had the time of their lives. But according to sources who spoke to the Daily Mail, those pictures didn’t capture how completely draining the whole thing was. The three-day celebration took place in peak summer heat, and guests had to navigate Venice’s complicated canal system to get from one event to another. What looks romantic in movies turns into a sweaty hassle when you’re trying to coordinate 200 people.
Getting everyone to the same place at the same time via boat took forever, and people were reportedly “completely tired by the time of the wedding day” itself. Despite Bezos spending millions on the festivities, there’s apparently no amount of money that can make Venice in June comfortable when you’re dressed to the nines and on a tight schedule. The source claimed the experience was “exhausting and full-on” for attendees, which is probably not what you want people saying about your wedding celebration. Sometimes throwing more money at a problem just creates fancier problems.
The minibar wasn’t complimentary and guests needed credit cards
Here’s where things get truly bizarre. You’re invited to the wedding of one of the richest men on Earth, you fly to Italy on one of the estimated 90 private jets that descended on Venice for the occasion, and when you get to your luxury hotel room, the Toblerone in the minibar isn’t covered. According to reports, guests had to provide their credit card details when checking in, and the minibar was not included in the arrangements. Let that sink in for a second.
This is a man who could buy every hotel in Venice without checking his bank balance, yet wedding guests were expected to pay for their own snacks. It’s the kind of detail that feels more like a corporate conference than a celebration of love. Some might call it practical, but when you’re spending over $50 million on a three-day party, charging your guests for a bag of cashews sends a very specific message. The optics are just weird, especially when you’re trying to show everyone how grand and generous the whole affair is. Either go all-in on the hospitality or don’t, but this middle ground is just confusing.
Amazon slides in the gift bags raised eyebrows everywhere
Wedding favors are supposed to be a nice touch, a little memento to thank people for celebrating with you. Maybe some monogrammed coasters or fancy chocolates. Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez went in a different direction: they handed out Amazon-branded slides. Not designer sandals from some Italian luxury brand, not custom-made leather goods—Amazon slides. The kind of thing you might get at a corporate team-building retreat, not a $50 million wedding.
People on social media had a field day with this one, calling them “cheap sandals” and comparing the gift bags to what you’d get at a work conference. One person joked it felt like “corporate retreat” merchandise, which is probably the last association you want at your wedding. When you’re worth hundreds of billions of dollars and you give out promotional items from your own company, it doesn’t read as thoughtful—it reads as tone-deaf. The gesture came across less like “thank you for sharing our special day” and more like “here’s some merch.” For a couple that went all-out on almost everything else, this choice was genuinely puzzling.
Lauren Sánchez’s look has people talking
Jeff Bezos could presumably charm almost any woman on the planet into marrying him, given his wealth and status. So why Lauren Sánchez? That’s the question a lot of people are asking, and it’s not meant to be cruel—it’s about the choices people make when they have unlimited options. Sánchez is a 55-year-old former TV presenter and licensed helicopter pilot, and by all accounts she’s probably great company. But her aesthetic choices have become part of the conversation in ways that feel deliberate.
She’s adopted what some observers call the “MAGA aesthetic”—heavy fillers, lots of Botox, work that’s so obvious it seems designed to draw attention to its own artificiality. It’s a look shared by other women in similar circles, like Kristi Noem and even Melania Trump, whose faces seem to be in a constant state of uncomfortable transformation. The Guardian’s Emma Brockes noted that this isn’t just “bad work”—the uniformity suggests something closer to a deliberate design choice. When you have access to the world’s best cosmetic surgeons, looking this specific isn’t an accident. Some have speculated it’s about control, a way for extremely wealthy men to literally reshape the women around them. Whatever the reason, it’s definitely gotten people talking.
The guest list felt more about status than friendship
When you look at who attended this wedding—Oprah Winfrey, Kim Kardashian, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mick Jagger, Orlando Bloom—a pattern emerges. These aren’t exactly the people you’d expect to be Jeff Bezos’s closest friends. They’re the people you invite when you want to make a statement. Megyn Kelly absolutely tore into this aspect of the wedding on her SiriusXM show, pointing out that truly close friends would be people who knew you before you built Amazon, not a collection of celebrities.
“What matters to them is that it’s a star-studded event, not that they have dear friends who love them,” Kelly said, and she had a point. This wasn’t an intimate gathering of people who genuinely care about the couple—it was a who’s who of famous people assembled to make headlines. Even actress Charlize Theron made a joke at her own event, saying “I think we might be the only people who did not get an invite to the Bezos wedding. But that’s OK because they suck and we’re cool.” The whole thing felt less like a wedding and more like a performance designed to prove something to the world. When your wedding is more about the guest list than the actual marriage, something’s off.
Rosie O’Donnell called out the gross excess
Not everyone stayed quiet about how uncomfortable the whole spectacle was. Rosie O’Donnell wrote a scathing piece on her Substack newsletter that didn’t hold back. “It turned my stomach,” she wrote. “Seeing all these billionaires. Gathering in the gross excess of it all. The show of it.” She went further, questioning how Oprah could even be friends with someone like Bezos, given how he treats Amazon employees. O’Donnell called Sánchez a “fake fem bot wife” and wondered why Bezos would choose her over his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott.
The former talk show host pointed out that Bezos was raised by a single mother, so he knows exactly what he’s doing when he flaunts this kind of wealth. “We have become numb to gross excess. We have learned to tolerate it,” she wrote, adding that the whole thing represented “celebrity worship devoid of humanity.” O’Donnell’s criticism hit on something important: when the wealth gap is this extreme and people are struggling with basic needs, watching billionaires spend $50 million on a three-day party feels obscene. Her words were harsh, sure, but they resonated with a lot of people who are tired of being expected to celebrate this kind of excess.
Venice protesters weren’t impressed by billionaire tourism
The people who actually live in Venice have been dealing with overtourism for years, watching their city turn into a theme park for wealthy visitors while locals get priced out. So when Jeff Bezos decided to take over prime real estate for a massive wedding, residents decided to make their feelings known. Environmental groups including Greenpeace demonstrated in the city center, drawing attention to the absurdity of 90 private jets flying in for one wedding.
Tommaso Cacciari, spokesperson for No Space for Bezos, told the BBC: “We are very proud of this! We are nobodies, we have no money, nothing!” The fact that regular people with no resources managed to force a venue change against one of the world’s richest men is actually pretty remarkable. It shows that there are still limits to what money can buy, and that communities can push back when they feel disrespected. The protesters weren’t anti-wedding or anti-celebration—they were anti-billionaire entitlement. When you treat an entire historic city like your personal backdrop without consideration for the people who live there, don’t be surprised when they show up with pool floats and protest signs.
The timing and choices reveal something deeper
Jeff Bezos used to look like your typical tech nerd—kind of weedy, a little awkward, focused on building Amazon. Then he got divorced from MacKenzie Scott, started dating Lauren Sánchez, and transformed himself into someone who looks like he’s wearing a cardboard box under his polo shirt. He built a rocket company, started hanging out with celebrities, and generally became a different person. The choices he’s made since becoming single again tell a story about what happens when you have unlimited resources and no one telling you no.
He went from being married to MacKenzie Scott, described by some as “salt of the earth,” to someone whose appearance and lifestyle scream artificial excess. The wedding wasn’t just weird because of the logistics or the gift bags—it was weird because it represented a very specific set of values. Status over substance. Performance over intimacy. Excess over taste. When you choose to have a wedding that exhausts your guests, annoys an entire city, and sparks protests about inequality, you’re making a statement about what matters to you. And what seems to matter here isn’t love or connection—it’s showing everyone exactly how rich and powerful you are, even if that means looking ridiculous in the process.
Maybe the weirdest thing about Jeff Bezos’s marriage isn’t any single detail—it’s the whole package. From the venue drama to the exhausted guests to the Amazon slides, every choice reveals priorities that feel disconnected from normal human experience. When you’re worth over $200 billion, apparently the regular rules of taste and consideration just don’t apply anymore. The wedding proved that you can have all the money in the world and still make decisions that leave everyone scratching their heads.
