Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and journalist Lauren Sanchez have left their luxury hotel on Venice’s Grand Canal to head to their wedding ceremony, the centrepiece of a three-day gala featuring dozens of stars but also protests by local activists.
Sanchez, 55, waved and blew kisses to onlookers as she boarded a sleek motor boat outside the Aman hotel wearing shades and a head scarf to protect her from the blistering summer sun.
About two hours later Bezos, 61, made the same short trip across the lagoon to the small island of San Giorgio where the couple will exchange rings, accompanied by singing from Matteo Bocelli, son of Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.
The evening ceremony will have no legal status under Italian law, a senior city hall official told Reuters, suggesting the couple may have already legally wed in the United States, avoiding the bureaucracy associated with an Italian marriage.
The festivities, estimated to cost about $US50 million ($A77 million), culminate on Saturday with a party in a former medieval shipyard where media outlets say Lady Gaga and Elton John are set to perform.
Bill Gates, Leonardo DiCaprio, Orlando Bloom, Tom Brady, the queen of Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Kris Jenner and Kim and Khloe Kardashian as well as Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner and Domenico Dolce from Dolce & Gabbana are among the 200-250 guests.
Amid tight security, there have been glimpses of the celebrities moving around town, the women in summer dresses and high heels stepping somewhat gingerly off boats ferrying them around the city’s canals.
Celebrations began on Thursday evening in the cloisters of Madonna dell’Orto, a medieval church in the central district of Cannaregio that hosts masterpieces by 16th-century painter Tintoretto.
“This magical place has gifted us unforgettable memories,” the bride and groom said on their wedding invitation, in which they asked for “no gifts” and pledged charity donations for three Venetian institutions.
Their donations are worth 3 million euros ($A5.4 million).
Businesses have welcomed the glitz and glamour but it is opposed by a local protest movement whose members resent what they see as Venice being gift-wrapped for ultra-rich outsiders.
Bezos is No.4 on Forbes’ global billionaires list.
Giulia Cacopardo, a 28-year-old representative of the “No Space for Bezos” movement, complained that the needs of ordinary people were being neglected in a city that is a tourist magnet and fast depopulating largely due to the soaring cost of living.
Venice’s city centre has less than 50,000 residents, compared to almost 100,000 in the late 1970s.
“When you empty a city of its inhabitants, you can turn it into a stage for big events,” Cacopardo told Reuters.
“(But) the money that Bezos spends on this wedding does not end up in the pockets of Venetians. The owners of luxury hotels are not Venetians.”
Cacopardo was one of 30-40 activists who staged a protest in St Mark’s Square on Thursday, chanting “We are the 99 per cent” as a masked couple posed as bride and groom and one man climbed a pole to unfurl a banner reading “The 1 per cent ruins the world”.
Police intervened, forcibly removing the protesters.
The anti-Bezos front is planning a march on Saturday, and their activities have already led authorities to step up security and move the location of the closing party to a more secluded part of Venice, the Arsenale former shipyard.
Charlotte Perkins, an Australian tourist, said she could understand the locals’ resentment at their city being treated as a celebrity playground.
“I’d probably feel the same if I lived here,” she said.
But politicians, hoteliers and some other Venice residents are happy about the wedding, saying such events do more to support the local economy than the multitudes of day-trippers who normally overrun the city.
“We are happy and honoured to welcome Jeff Bezos and his consort Lauren Sanchez,” mayor Luigi Brugnaro said.
Bezos, Amazon’s executive chair, got engaged to Sanchez in 2023, four years after the collapse of his 25-year marriage to MacKenzie Scott.
Australian Associated Press is the beating heart of Australian news. AAP is Australia’s only independent national newswire and has been delivering accurate, reliable and fast news content to the media industry, government and corporate sector for 85 years. We keep Australia informed.
