Salt cod and tiramisu on the menu as Jeff Bezos closes wedding in pyjamas
Jeff Bezos and his new bride, Lauren Sanchez Bezos, threw a pyjama party for their 250 celebrity guests in Venice on Saturday night as they rounded off three days of lavish wedding celebrations.
The Amazon founder, whose $237 billion (£173 billion) fortune makes him the third richest person in the world, hosted a grand gala dinner that featured specialities from the Veneto region including baccala, or salt cod, and tiramisu.
Music was provided by Usher, the R&B superstar, and DJ Cassidy, whose high-profile performances in the past include Barack Obama's 50th birthday and the wedding of Beyoncé and Jay-Z.
There had been reports that Lady Gaga would perform with Sir Elton John, but ultimately neither showed up.
Some female guests wore lingerie while the men wore pyjamas. The British actor Orlando Bloom wore black and white polka dot pyjamas over a black t-shirt.
True to style, Kim Kardashian opted for a risqué look, wearing underwear, a tight corset and thigh-high stockings.
Leonardo DiCaprio's Italian girlfriend, 27-year-old model Vittoria Ceretti, wore a transparent dress by Dolce & Gabbana and was photographed leaving the Gritti Palace Hotel. It was the same dress worn by Gisele Bundchen, DiCaprio's ex-girlfriend, in 2003.
Di Caprio also embraced the theme, wearing what appeared to be silk pyjamas and a blazer.
The pyjama party later segued into a Carnevale-themed party featuring decorated masks and elaborate ball gowns, according to Italian media reports.
The event took place in the Arsenal, the historic shipyards where Venetians constructed timber merchant vessels and war ships as the city established trading outposts throughout the Adriatic and the eastern Mediterranean.
The location was reportedly decorated with art installations, atmospheric lighting and tens of thousands of flowers, with the newly married couple stepped off their water taxi onto a floating platform.
For the final party, Lauren Sanchez Bezos, as she now calls herself, wore a Versace gown designed by Donatella Versace herself.
Just as the party was starting, around 500 protesters staged a noisy march through the streets of Venice, denouncing the extravagance of the wedding festivities and criticising Mr Bezos' political support for Donald Trump.
Under the slogan No Space for Bezos, they set off coloured smoke flares and played loud music as they walked from Venice's railway station to the famed Rialto Bridge, which spans the Grand Canal not far from the Aman Hotel, where the wedding couple and many of their guests were staying.
They carried placards that read 'Eat the Rich' and 'With the Money Spent on this Wedding You Could Rebuild Gaza.' One banner claimed that the popularity of Amazon had led to the closure of 118,000 shops in Italy.
They said that the wedding, estimated to have cost up to $50 million, was emblematic of Venice's subjugation to tourism and its slow descent into becoming a sort of heritage Disneyland with an ever-shrinking population.
While the activists said that Mr Bezos was not welcome, many Venetians disagreed.
Hoteliers, restaurant owners and gondoliers were among those insisting that the event had brought huge economic benefit to the World Heritage city.
'It was a big success for Venice, which should continue to host events of this calibre,' said Antonio Onorato, a member of the Association of Venetian Hoteliers.
The three-day celebrations, attended by Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and Queen Rania of Jordan, 'brought huge visibility to Venice,' he said.
'The hope is that the presence of Bezos will encourage others of the same calibre to come to the city.'
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