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Scores of celebrities and members of the world’s super-rich are arriving in Venice by air and sea for the wedding of Jeff Bezos, the billionaire Amazon founder, and Lauren Sánchez, a former TV journalist.
More than 90 private jets are expected to land in the Italian city before the celebrations officially begin on Thursday, bringing in guests for a three-day jamboree that some have called the “wedding of the century” that is rumoured to involve everything from pyjama parties to elegant dinners.
Among the first guests to arrive were Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, her husband, Jared Kushner, and their children. The family are staying at the St Regis, close to St Mark’s Square, one of a host of five-star hotels booked out by the 200 or so wedding guests.
According to reports in the local press, some of the more low-profile invitees arrived in the lagoon city even earlier. Arience, a 60-metre yacht belonging to the American fund manager and Amazon investor Bill Miller moored by St Mark’s earlier this week.
Kismet, a superyacht owned by Shahid Khan, a Pakistani American billionaire and the owner of Fulham FC, is also moored in the city.
Venice authorities are rolling out a huge security operation, including at Marco Polo airport, as concerns rise over geopolitical instability as well as threats by activists from the No Space for Bezos campaign group to clog the canals with inflatable crocodiles in order to impede guests.
Other VIPs believed to be on the guest list include Kim Kardashian, Oprah Winfrey, Eva Longoria and Orlando Bloom, and possibly Bill Gates, Mick Jagger and Elton John.
If the sound of wheeled suitcases being dragged along Venice’s narrow lanes is among the bugbears of the city’s ever dwindling band of residents, local newspapers have warned them to be prepared for the stacks of luggage the Bezos’s guests will need to bring containing the many outfits required for what they say will be “a wedding in three acts”.
Details of the celebrations are strictly under wraps and all staff involved have been warned not to even mention the nuptials when speaking on the phone.
But it is believed the couple will exchange vows on Friday in San Giorgio Maggiore basilica on the Venetian island of the same name. The main wedding reception is expected to be held on Saturday in the Arsenale, a historic complex of shipyards surrounded by fortified walls.
The big party was originally supposed to take place in a 16th-century building in the centre of the city but was switched due to the security concerns.
The wedding, said to be costing €40m-€48m (£34m-£41m), is the most high-profile to take place in Venice since George and Amal Clooney were married in the city in 2014. But while the Clooneys were welcomed, the Bezos’s nuptials have been far more contentious, with posters featuring Bezos’s head on a rocket blasting into space – in reference to his Blue Origin space tourism venture – pasted on walls across the city.
Protesters say the event risks turning the world heritage site, which has long suffered from the effects of excessive tourism, into a playground for the rich.
Greenpeace Italia and the British activist group Everyone Hates Elon have joined the protests, unfurling a huge banner in St Mark’s Square on Monday with a picture of Bezos laughing and a sign reading: “If you can rent Venice for your wedding you can pay more tax.”
A similar banner was pinned to a huge crane in front of Hotel Danieli, where some of the guests are staying, on Tuesday night.
Venice’s millionaire mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, has condemned the protesters as “shameful”.
Bezos will make sizeable charity donations, including €1m towards a project that studies Venice’s lagoon system, according to reports in the Corriere della Sera newspaper and the news agency Ansa.
