This is how much Jeff Bezos' 'si, amore!' cost in Venice

If your name is Jeff Bezos, you don't just celebrate your wedding in a venue around the corner. No, you rent Venice almost entirely to yourself for three days, with gondolas, world stars and price tags that most people can't even imagine. What did that whole spectacle cost? 

Last Friday, Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez tied the knot on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, in the middle of the Venetian lagoon. This ended months of speculation about the billionaire couple’s wedding, which was previously rumored to take place in Aspen with an alleged budget of $600 million, a rumor that Bezos personally dismissed as a fantasy in a post on X. 

But even without Aspen, the wedding was anything but modest. The Venetian spectacle was estimated to cost between 40 and 48 million euros. The couple had already been officially married in the US, after signing a prenuptial agreement. The wedding in Italy was mainly a lavish celebration for friends, royals and celebrities. 

Guest list

Who was there? Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DiCaprio, Bill Gates, Barbra Streisand, the Kardashians, Ivanka Trump and Queen Rania of Jordan. They all stayed in five-star hotels such as the Gritti Palace, St. Regis and the Aman, which Bezos promptly rented out in full, including booking out existing guests to other luxury resorts. Estimated cost: $900.000 for three nights in some 150 rooms. 

The wedding weekend started off stormy, literally. A welcome party at the Madonna dell'Orto church had to be cut short due to bad weather. The ceremony took place on Friday in the 16th-century Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore, where Matteo Bocelli, son of, performed. A grand closing party was planned for Saturday at the Arsenale, but was moved at the last minute to the Scuola Grande Della Misericordia for safety reasons.

In the culinary field, nothing was too crazy. Three-star chef Fabrizio Mellino provided the catering for around 1.800 dollars per person, good for at least 1.1 million dollars over three days. The couple probably spent 210 dollars on water taxis (around thirty of them, between 290 and 270.000 dollars per hour). 

The security was a multi-million dollar operation, with dozens of police officers, dog squads and bodyguards combing the city and hotels for weeks. But protests were inevitable. Some 300 Venetians took to the Rialto Bridge to protest against the “playground for the rich,” as Venice is called during these events. Bezos tried to polish his image with a 3 million euro donation to three Venetian institutions, including the UNESCO office and Corila, which protects the lagoon. 

Yet even this Venetian multi-million dollar party pales in comparison to the wedding festivities of Anant Ambani, son of India's richest man, which reportedly cost around $2024 million in 500.