Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez’s Wedding, 2025
Three days in Venice, a high-necked Dolce & Gabbana gown with 180 covered buttons, some 200 guests and a city divided over whether it wanted them. The billionaire wedding as civic event.
In June 2025 Venice became, for three days, a private venue. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and Lauren Sánchez, a journalist, married on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore before about 200 guests, with parties on either side of the ceremony in a cloister and a medieval shipyard. It was one of the most photographed weddings of the year and, unusually for a celebrity wedding, the subject of a genuine political argument: about tourism, about wealth, and about who a city like Venice is for.
| At a glance | |
|---|---|
| Date | Friday, June 27, 2025 (celebrations June 26–28) |
| Place (ceremony) | Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice |
| Reception | Welcome party in the cloisters of Madonna dell’Orto (June 26); final party at the Arsenale (June 28) |
| The dress (designer) | Custom Dolce & Gabbana |
| Guests | About 200, including Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DiCaprio, Bill Gates, Tom Brady, Usher, Kim Kardashian and Ivanka Trump |
The couple
Bezos and Sánchez became engaged in May 2023. Both had been married before: Bezos to MacKenzie Scott, and Sánchez to the talent agent Patrick Whitesell, from whom she was divorced in 2019. Sánchez has three children. In April 2025, two months before the wedding, she flew to the edge of space aboard Blue Origin’s NS-31 mission, part of an all-female crew that included Katy Perry and Gayle King.
The ceremony
The celebrations began on Thursday, June 26, with a welcome party in the cloisters of the church of Madonna dell’Orto. The ceremony took place the following day on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, and the singer Matteo Bocelli, son of Andrea, performed. The couple stayed at the Aman Venice. Reporting at the time noted that it was unclear when the couple had legally married, or whether they had already done so in the United States.
The dress
Sánchez’s ceremony gown was a custom Dolce & Gabbana design, confirmed when Vogue published her as a digital cover: a high-necked lace dress with a corseted bodice fastened by 180 silk chiffon-covered buttons. It was a classical choice, closer in spirit to a church wedding of the 1950s than to red-carpet dressing. Over the weekend she wore many other looks, among them a white Dior skirt suit and, for cocktails, an Oscar de la Renta dress covered in 175,000 crystals. After the Vogue story appeared she changed her Instagram name to Lauren Sanchez Bezos. More in our guide to celebrity wedding dresses.
The reception
The final party, on Saturday, June 28, was held at the Arsenale, the former medieval shipyard of the Venetian Republic. It had originally been planned for a more central location and was moved after protest groups threatened to disrupt it; the Arsenale, surrounded by water, is far easier to secure. Guests included Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DiCaprio, Bill Gates, Tom Brady, Usher, Karlie Kloss, Sydney Sweeney, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, and members of the Kardashian-Jenner family.
The protests
A coalition calling itself “No Space for Bezos,” bringing together about a dozen Venetian groups concerned with housing, cruise ships and overtourism, argued that the wedding symbolized a city rented out to outsiders. Activists hung banners from the Rialto Bridge and the bell tower of San Giorgio. Greenpeace joined with another group to unfurl a banner in St. Mark’s Square reading “If you can rent Venice for your wedding you can pay more tax,” which police removed. On the Saturday, protesters marched from the railway station. Italian and Venetian officials welcomed the wedding, and Corila, a Venetian lagoon research consortium, announced an “important donation” from the Bezos Earth Fund, amount undisclosed.
Why it mattered
The Venice wedding showed how a celebrity destination wedding now carries a public dimension that no guest list can contain. For a fragile city that lives with overtourism, the question of whether a place can be booked like a ballroom was not an abstraction. Couples far from billionaire budgets face a smaller version of the same question whenever they marry somewhere that others call home.
Borrow the idea
Choose a gown that suits the setting. A long-sleeved, high-necked dress feels right in a church or historic building. See the wedding dress decoded for necklines and sleeves.
Be a good guest of the place. For a destination wedding, hire local vendors, respect residents’ routines and ask your planner about permits early.
Plan three distinct evenings. A welcome drink, the ceremony and a final party, each in a different setting, give a weekend structure. Keep the first one short and relaxed.
Give something back. A donation to a local cause in the wedding’s name is a graceful gesture at any budget.
Written and edited by the Today’s Weddings editors. How we research and check what we publish is set out in our editorial standards. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.
