Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez’s lavish Italian wedding is days away, but amid “tension-filled” protests from the local community and global unrest, the soon-to-be newlyweds are reportedly facing some last-minute changes.
Local reports, via the Daily Mailare claiming organizers have decided to change one of the venues for the extravagant $48 million event after protesters began to descend upon Venice ahead of the June 26 to June 28 celebrations.
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Reports claim that a party planned to take place at the Scuola Grande della Misericordia on Saturday night has now been moved to another venue in the Arsenale area of the city. Because Bezos, 61, and Sanchez, 55, are already attracting protesters, the “tension-filled” will be “easier to control” at the new location.
The Amazon founder reportedly hired a team of former US Marines to provide security for the wedding, which has been criticized by locals from the moment their wedding location was revealed.
Demonstrators have been gathering with signs urging Bezos to stay out and demanding that he and billionaires like him pay more taxes. The Daily Mail reports that activists from the British group ‘Everyone Hates Elon’ were also involved and claimed the protests are intended to highlight the “environmental and social injustice of the wedding.”
“Bezos encapsulates an economic and social model which is steering us towards collapse,” one member said. “All too often now social injustice travels on an equal par with the climate, on one side the arrogance of a few billionaires who have a lifestyle that devastates the planet, (on the other side are) people who suffer daily from the environment crisis.”
In response to the protests, Bezos and Sanchez’s wedding planners, Lanza & Baucina Limited, released a statement, via Page Sixdefending the couple and their three-day wedding.
“From the outset, instructions from our client and our own guiding principles were abundantly clear: the minimising of any disruption to the city, the respect for its residents and institutions and the overwhelming employment of locals in the crafting of the events,” the planners, who produced weddings in Venice for George and Amal Clooney in 2014 and Salma Hayek and François-Henri Pinault in 2009 said.
Bezos and Sanchez have been together since 2019 and got engaged back in 2023.
Before you go, click here to see all the celebrities who have pulled off secret weddings.
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