With his $15m nuptials, Bezos is the latest to say ‘I do' to loving a massive wedding
Amazon gazillionaire Jeff Bezos is reportedly dropping $US10 million ($15.5 million) to marry his second wife, former TV presenter and amateur astronaut Lauren Sánchez, on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore next week. Last month, Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry partied at Sanchez's Paris hen night as an army of lawyers finalised the pre-nup.
Such big-ticket wedding extravaganzas are much more than a celebration of love, of course: beyond the spectacle, they are highly choreographed PR offensives that the media lap up, giving the rest of us a glimpse into the rarefied orbits of the world's rich, famous and powerful. In 2007, I spent a week clinging to a rocky outcrop, fighting off the French paparazzi under the searing Mediterranean sun, while watching Tom Cruise, his then-wife Katie Holmes, Eddie McGuire, Shane Warne and most of the Murdoch family live the good life aboard superyachts during James Packer's six-day, $6 million wedding to Erica Packer. The bride wore a $150,000 dress by John Galliano for Christian Dior while Sarah Murdoch dazzled in a bikini on the deck of a $50 million Mangusta.
At James' big sister Gretel Packer's lavish 1991 wedding in West Sussex, waiters were doused in Chanel No. 5 before being unleashed among the VIP guests gathered in a mock-Cotswold stone marquee fashioned out of polystyrene; Kerry Packer was clearly out to impress the Brits. In 2006, my lips turned blue hiding behind a pot plant as I listened to Keith Urban serenade his new bride, Nicole Kidman, on a freezing Sydney winter's night, while the wreck of the Hesperus had nothing on me after I'd chased Bec and Lleyton Hewitt's 2005 wedding flotilla across a choppy Sydney Harbour aboard a clapped-out fishing tinnie.
Brynne Edelsten admitted she'd never met most of the guests at her extravagant 2009 Melbourne wedding to the late, disgraced medico Geoffrey Edelsten, who'd paid Jason Alexander and Fran Drescher to attend. Kyle Sandilands gave away tickets on air to his first wedding, to Tamara Jaber in 2008 and, in 2023, raised eyebrows by inviting PM Anthony Albanese and NSW Premier Chris Minns – along with underworld figure John Ibrahim and convicted drug trafficker Simon Maine – to his second wedding to Tegan Kynaston. Meanwhile, Australia's richest human, Gina Rinehart, caused a scandal when she flew then-deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop and Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce to the sumptuous, three-day wedding of the granddaughter of a prominent business associate in Hyderabad in 2011.
According to industry statistics, the cost of the average wedding in Oz is $33,810. For the amount he's paying, Bezos could say 'I do' 458 times.
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