People Are Protesting Jeff Bezos's Venice Wedding in Some Very Creative Ways
Dummies of Jeff Bezos have been seen floating in the Venice canals.
Published June 27 2025, 2:32 p.m. ET
People are protesting Jeff Bezos' wedding to Lauren Sánchez in Venice, Italy. The couple is having a three-day extravaganza for their nuptials in the European city, and their guest list features celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Orlando Bloom, and the Kardashians, just to name a few.
The Amazon founder and his bride arrived in Venice on June 25, and the couple stayed at the luxurious Aman Hotel, per the Associated Press.
The billionaire was immediately met with protests by the local community, and people want to know why.
Why are people protesting Jeff Bezos' wedding?
According to NPR, people are protesting Jeff Bezos's wedding to Lauren Sánchez because they feel the billionaire's extravagant nuptials are exploiting Venice. The couple is reportedly spending $10 million on their wedding, and at least 90 private jets are expected to bring in their rich and famous guests.
The three-day event began on June 26 with a welcome night for the wedding guests at the Madonna dell'Orto church. The wedding will take place on June 27 at the Giorgio Cini Foundation on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, and the third day will include a dinner for the wedding guests at the Arsenal of Venice, a site of former armories and shipyards.
The dinner was originally scheduled at Scuola vecchia della Misericordia, but protesters forced the couple to change the location.
The event was originally scheduled to take place at the 16th-century Scuola Grande della Misericordia building, but the protesters prompted the couple to change locations.
Protesters used the slogan "No Space for Bezos" as they took to the canals of Venice to speak out against the Blue Origin space tourism owner and his extravagant affair. Replica dummies of Jeff were placed in the canal, floating on Amazon boxes, and dummy replicas of the couple were also placed in the canal on a gondola.
Protesters, including several from Greenpeace Italy, also hung banners and anti-Bezos posters throughout Venice. One banner read, "If you can rent Venice for your wedding, you can pay more tax." The activists want Jeff to pay his employees fair wages with his enormous wealth, which is estimated to be around $223.7 billion, per Fortune.
The organizers of the Venetian wedding, Lanza & Baucina Limited, released a statement to defend the nuptials and claimed the city would not by disrupted by the event.
The statement said that no "exaggerated quantity" of water taxis or gondolas were booked. It also said that the number of taxis reserved was "proportionate" for the number of guests, which is about 200 people.
"From the outset, instructions from our client and our own guiding principles were abundantly clear," read the statement. "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,"
All the protests don't seem to be bothering the couple and their wedding guests too much. Several guests were seen enjoying the festivities, including Tom Brady, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Ivanka Trump.