How was it for you? Jeff Bezos's wedding guests, ranked in order of happiness

Telegraph

a day ago

There comes a point in any multi-day wedding when the mood takes a subtle but irreversible turn from sheer jubilation to near incarceration.
When the esprit de corps that radiated from guests during welcome cocktails on Thursday night has entirely evaporated, to the extent that at least six people among the party have idly daydreamed about a massacre.
When all small talk dried up several days ago, during the colour-coded warm-up pre-lunch wedding-eve-eve game of rounders, meaning even childhood friends are simply standing in barren silence, flat champagne in one hand, thicket of dirty bamboo skewers in the other.
When dozens of people have French-exited to avoid the day-four life drawing and tarot after-after-after party, despite the airport being a six-hour taxi ride away and there being no flights until March.
It's a volta you so rarely see caught on camera – usually because the photographer died of exhaustion shortly after the first dance – which is why we must treasure the below image of Bill Gates. Here is a deeply serious, respected 69-year-old man who absolutely does not want to go to a dolce notte pyjamas-and-lingerie party with Orlando Bloom and some of the Kardashians, but alas, he RSVP'd and gave his dietary requirements. His sentence is written.
Gates was in Venice as a guest at the little-reported union of Jeff Bezos to Lauren Sánchez. In the build-up, 'the wedding of the century', according to Vogue – a big call, 25 years in and when Prince Louis is showing such promise as a party guy – saw the Floating City at risk of sinking under the weight of expectation, but it seems to have gone off without incident.
(Not that we'd have known if it hadn't: despite so many press photographers descending on Venice that we'd have had to resort to watercolours of the scene if news had broken at home, all we got were galleries of celebrities impatiently waiting for water taxis.)
Who exactly are Bezos and Sánchez's friends, given one is a businessman of near Bond-villain wealth and notoriety and the other is a journalist turned helicopter pilot? A good question, and one we're no closer to answering after a £34million feature-length weekend of felicity that included a foam party, a Great Gatsby-themed party, the aforementioned jim-jam jamboree and, at some point, a wedding.
We were promised an A-list crowd and we… only sort of got it. There were superstars, foreign dignitaries, fashion doyennes, middling celebrities and miscellaneous rich people, but the thread between most of them and the happy couple was rarely clear. What seemed more likely was that invitations were sent to the 1,000 wealthiest and most famous people on the planet, and around 200 thought: 'Yeah, why not? I'm free that weekend.'
By Sunday morning, some may have been regretting that decision. So, here are 10 guests, ranked from least to most happy to be there. It's pure speculation, of course, but this we do know: right now, they never want to see one another again.
10) Bill Gates
The former world's richest man likely attended the wedding of another former world's richest man out of curiosity. 'It's been a while. What are guys like me doing for second weddings these days? I should go check Jeff's out,' he might have thought, looking tenderly across at his new girlfriend, Paula Hurd.
The haunted look in his eyes in those day-three pyjamas suggests he will not be rushing into marriage again. There's simply no way Gates didn't make his excuses to Ellie Goulding or whoever he was chatting to, and then pretend to take a call, before jumping in a water Uber within 10 minutes of arriving.
9) Sydney Sweeney
It's a puzzle, quite why the most in-demand young actress in the world at the moment, a 27-year-old woman so desired that she's literally selling soap made from her own bathwater, decided to travel to Venice to attend the wedding of a 61-year-old e-commerce magnate. It's something to do, I guess.
Hopefully she arrived with a suitcase full of that soap to flog, as she reportedly proved a hit – especially with famous men in their late 40s who have recently split up with famous women. 'Tom Brady and Sydney Sweeney fuel romance buzz after 'dancing til 2am' at Bezos wedding blowout,' shrieked one headline. 'Newly single Orlando Bloom spotted hanging out with Sydney Sweeney in Venice,' read another.
According to an 'insider' the Daily Mail found, 'Sydney apparently is the most sought-after person to be around at the Bezos wedding. Everyone wants to talk to her, and every guy that has been in her presence has talked about how stunning she is in real life.' We know how Bloom's cleaning himself tonight, then.
8) Queen Rania of Jordan
You may be starting to get an idea of how delightfully chaotic this guest list is, and it really is. In fact, there's a very real chance the following conversation took place:
'Hello, I'm Khloé Kardashian, who are you?'
'Hi, I'm the Queen of Jordan. What do you do?'
'Well, I'm one of the stars of Keeping Up With the Kardashians and the founder of protein popcorn brand Khloud. And you?'
'I'm the Queen of Jordan.'
And so on.
7) Sam Altman
Speaking of artificial intelligence, here's Sam Altman. He's a tech billionaire, so it is at least easy to understand why the OpenAI boss might have met Bezos and become friends with him.
Trickier to parse is how the socially reclusive, firmly nerdish, famously serious Altman dealt with being at a pounding foam party with Oprah, Gayle King, and unlimited blush rosé. Thoughts and prayers.
6) Leonardo DiCaprio
For reasons we can only guess at, Leonardo DiCaprio always appears in public looking like a housemaster from a small Home Counties private school scurrying out of Westminster Magistrates' Court after being found guilty in a case relating to him leaving a GoPro in the sixth form girls' dormitory.
That is: cap pulled down to the goatee, stiff palm out for guidance, a quick shuffle to a car, no questions please.
This was the case again at the wedding in Venice, an event he agreed to attend despite one of the party themes being The Great Gatsby – which is a bit like Daniel Radcliffe hanging around in the car park at Warner Bros Studios.
5) Orlando Bloom
Is it possible for an entire wedding to have 'big divorce energy'? Well, this one did. Not only were Bezos and Sánchez on their second weddings, but a curious number of guests, from Brady to Ellie Goulding, divorced recently and used the weekend to be noticeably single.
Orlando Bloom and the astronaut Katy Perry were never technically married, but news of their recent split after nine years together still threatened to steal Sánchez and Bezos's thunder when it broke this week.
As it happened, Perry is on tour (on Earth) and couldn't attend. Bloom, then, planned to use the weekend to 'relaunch' himself in a new phase of his life, or so we were told. And you'd have to say that this is an easier way of doing that than finding a good film project.
4) Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner
Is it likely they attended purely to experience the giddy rush of being at a high-profile event where protestors were chanting and threatening to shut down the whole thing but not because of them?
No, they probably know the couple.
But is it possible? Yes, absolutely.
3) Lauren Sánchez
She's only behind Jeff because no man has ever looked happier than Jeff. Also, she went to space earlier this year, so it's debatable whether this is actually her highlight of 2025.
2) Jeff Bezos
Just look at him. Imagine his rocket. Sorry.
1) Kris Jenner
The ultimate culmination of so much momaging, so much glad-handing, one heroic stint commentating on that space flight and probably so many emails asking whether invitations have been sent out yet.
She did it. The whole gang (minus Kourtney and Rob) at the wedding of the second or third most powerful man in the world. No wonder she didn't stop smiling. Though it's not entirely clear what other option she has.