zandrafiedler
zandrafiedler
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez’s Wedding in Venice Starts with Celebrities And Protesters
VENICE, Italy – The superyachts are moored up, the personal jets have actually touched down and the stars, athletes and organization leaders are in Venice for one of the most talked-about wedding events of the year – that of billionaire Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez.
Oprah Winfrey, Kim and Khloe Kardashian, Tom Brady, Bill Gates and President Donald Trump’s and son-in-law Jared Kushner remain in the „city of love,“ together with Queen Rania of Jordan and Leonardo Di Caprio, for the 3 days of lavish celebrations that began Thursday with a star-studded gala.
Bezos, the world’s fourth-richest male, and Sanchez beamed and waved at members of the general public as they marched onto a water taxi ahead of the occasion at the cloisters behind the city’s Chiesa della Madonna dell’Orto church. Nearby, a boat complete of paparazzi eagerly snapped photos of the pair before they got in the secluded location.
The primary wedding event celebration will be held Saturday in among the halls of the Arsenale, a big previous medieval shipyard became an art area in the eastern Castello district.
„We are used to handling really crucial occasions,“ Deputy Venice Mayor Simone Venturini told NBC News on Wednesday as the city prepared for the wedding event, adding that the city previously hosted the late Pope Francis and world leaders going to the G7 and G20 tops.
In an earlier interview, he also recalled that the city had actually managed actor George Clooney and human rights legal representative Amal Alamuddin’s 2014 wedding, as crowds lined the canals and numerous well-wishers collected outside Town hall.
Unlike the Clooney wedding event nevertheless, he stated, Bezos’ wedding event would not be legal under Italian law due to the fact that it needed „to be performed in an official place like the City Hall.“ Neither Bezos nor Sanchez, a former TV news anchor, had actually requested this, he stated.
As an outcome, some have actually hypothesized that the couple have actually currently legally wed in the United States.
Not everyone in the city is as welcoming as Venturini. In current weeks, there have been demonstrations about the Amazon creator’s presence in the city, with those who object showing the banner „No Space for Bezos,“ a play on words describing his space exploration company, Blue Origin.
Around a lots Venetian companies consisting of anti-cruise ship campaigners and housing supporters, have actually been joined by larger activist groups like Greenpeace, which unfurled a giant tarp in the city’s well-known St. Mark’s Square on Monday, with a picture of a smiling Bezos beneath the words: „If you can rent Venice for your wedding you can pay more taxes.“
While cops rapidly removed the banner, which Greenpeace said was around 4,300 square feet in size, activists have actually likewise unfurled a banner on Venice’s famous Rialto bridge and floated a Bezos-inspired mannequin, its hands clenching phony money, down among the city’s canals on top of an Amazon delivery box.
Bezos, who according to Forbes has a net worth of $231 billion, stepped down as Amazon CEO in 2021, saying he wanted to spend more time on other tasks, including his Blue Origin space innovation company, The Washington Post and humanitarian initiatives.
Two years earlier, Bezos, who usually avoids the limelight, revealed he was separating his first partner, Mackenzie Scott, days before the National Enquirer published a story about his affair with Sanchez. On the day Bezos’ divorce was completed, Sanchez declared her own divorce from media executive Patrick Whitesell.
Venturini said the protesters had actually seen „a lot of paparazzi and a lot of exposure and attention from the world large network and they said, ‘Let’s exploit this attention.'“
He included that Bezos had made numerous contributions to organizations that worked to safeguard the Venetian lagoon system and heritage sites.
In the meantime, it’s organization as usual in this city that gets roughly 30 million visitors every year, according to visit guide Igor Scomparin. He said Sunday that it was „hard“ to keep things moving in a city that is only twice the size of New york city’s Central Park.