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Jeff Bezos chose Venice as the stage for his $46 million wedding, but protesters quickly turned the celebration into a battleground over climate injustice and unchecked wealth.
As 90 private jets landed and five-star hotels filled with celebrities, activists in the city responded with banners, marches, and laser projections accusing Bezos of environmental hypocrisy and capitalist excess.
The three-day event features yacht parties, couture gowns, and luxury gifts, but critics see a deeper story unfolding. They view this wedding as a symbol of how billionaires treat historic cities and fragile ecosystems as private playgrounds while claiming to support climate action.
Venice is watching, and so is the world.
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez began their three-day wedding celebration in Venice on June 27, surrounded by security, celebrities, and growing controversy.
The couple reportedly spent at least $46 million on the event, a figure confirmed by Veneto’s regional governor, Luca Zaia.
The celebration includes:
The guest list featured celebrities, billionaires, and royals, including Oprah Winfrey, Kim Kardashian, Bill Gates, Queen Rania of Jordan, Tom Brady, and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Guests arrived on superyachts and private jets, and local authorities increased security across the city.
Bezos and Sanchez made a $1.2 million donation to Corila, a nonprofit focused on preserving Venice’s lagoon ecosystem. Also, they are reportedly donating $3.5 million to the city, according to Veneto's regional president Luca Zaia. Nonetheless, critics have dismissed the gesture as greenwashing, arguing that the scale of luxury spending undermined any environmental commitment.
For many Venetians, the wedding symbolized the growing alienation of the city’s residents, who face overtourism, unaffordable housing, and climate threats while billionaires stage private events in public spaces.
As the wedding approached, a protest movement gained momentum across Venice. Activists rallied under the banner "No Space for Bezos," which brought together local collectives, climate groups, and anti-capitalist platforms. Their goal was to push back against what they deemed as the billionaire occupation of their city.
The original reception was set to take place at the Scuola Grande della Misericordia, a majestic 16th-century venue in the heart of Venice. However, activists threatened to fill surrounding canals with inflatable crocodiles, aiming to block access for high-profile guests.
Combined with rising security concerns due to the war between Israel and Iran and the presence of Ivanka Trump, the pressure led Bezos and Sanchez to relocate the event to the Arsenale.
"We’re nobodies, we have no money," said protester Tommaso Cacciari from a group calling itself "No Space for Bezos" told the BBC. "But we managed to move one of the most powerful people in the world."
Protesters unfurled massive banners across San Giorgio Maggiore and the Rialto Bridge, using green lasers to project profane messages targeting Jeff Bezos, along with slogans like "No Kings" and “If you can rent Venice for your wedding, you can pay more tax." Flyers and posters across the city portrayed Bezos with redacted eyes and the Amazon logo inverted into a sad face.
Groups such as Greenpeace Italia and Everyone Hates Elon joined the effort, calling attention to tax avoidance, climate injustice, and billionaire impunity.
More than 90 private jets flew into Venice and nearby airports for the Bezos wedding. The emissions generated by these arrivals added fuel to accusations of hypocrisy, as the event took place during a summer of intensifying climate disruption across Europe.
According to flight tracking data, arrivals included:
Activists called the wedding a display of unsustainable excess, held in a city already threatened by rising seas. Simona Abbate from Greenpeace described it as a celebration of climate injustice, criticising the extravagance of private jets and luxury parties in the middle of a global emergency.
While Bezos often promotes his philanthropic work through the $10 billion Bezos Earth Fund, critics say such efforts cannot offset the carbon trail created by his personal lifestyle and public displays of wealth. Even the $1.2 million donation to Corila was viewed as a symbolic gesture, disconnected from the scale of damage events like this can cause.
As guests toasted the newlyweds, others turned their attention to Bezos’ space ambitions. Blue Origin, his aerospace company, markets itself as a force for sustainability with slogans like "For the benefit of Earth." Still, recent missions have raised questions about the actual impact of commercial space travel.
Blue Origin’s latest all-female flight lasted only eleven minutes, generating launch emissions and injecting water vapour into the upper atmosphere, where it can contribute to global heating and ozone depletion. Though the rockets are reusable, the trips remain exclusive and resource-intensive.
With ticket deposits starting at $150,000, the company caters to a wealthy few. Critics call this form of travel "space colonialism," warning that it diverts resources and attention away from urgent problems on Earth.
The environmental impact of rocket launches is still poorly regulated, and the sector remains one of the least transparent when it comes to emissions reporting.
Beyond the optics of the wedding, Bezos has begun repositioning himself politically. In recent weeks, he and Blue Origin executives held multiple meetings with Donald Trump and senior White House staff. Their aim was to secure more government contracts, particularly as rival Elon Musk distanced himself from the administration.
Blue Origin already holds $2.4 billion in launch deals but lags behind SpaceX. According to the Wall Street Journal, Bezos even invited Trump to the Venice wedding, though the president did not attend.
This thaw in relations follows several gestures that suggest growing alignment. Bezos blocked The Washington Post from endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. Amazon reportedly paid $40 million for rights to a Melania Trump documentary, while the Bezos Earth Fund quietly ended support for the Science Based Targets initiative, a key climate certification body.
Critics see these moves as evidence that Bezos is now operating in sync with a broader anti-climate, pro-corporate political current. Activists argue that this shift goes beyond party politics and signals a dangerous merging of wealth, technology, and authoritarian power.
For Venetians, the Bezos wedding not only disrupted daily life but also exposed a deeper question about who controls the city’s future. While locals struggle with overtourism, displacement, and rising costs, events like this amplify a sense of exclusion and frustration.
Protesters described the wedding as a turning point. By forcing a venue change and staging visible, creative resistance, they challenged the idea that even the richest people on the planet can act without consequence. "This is not just about Venice," said activist Marta Sottoriva to the Guardian. "It’s about the political grammar of the world we’re being forced to live in."
Greenpeace and local groups linked the wedding to broader patterns of environmental destruction and social inequality. They accused Bezos of helping normalize a model where extreme wealth can reshape cities, erase public access, and escape accountability.
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