From the Kardashians to actual royalty: who had the best time partying with Bezos?

Irish Independent

4 days ago

When dozens of people have Irish-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 a new 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 Sanchez. In the build-up, 'the wedding of the century', according to Vogue saw the Floating City at risk of sinking under the weight of expectation, but it seems to have gone off without incident.
Who exactly are Bezos and Sanchez'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 €40m 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.' 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.
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.
According to an 'insider' the Daily Mail found, 'Sydney apparently is the most sought-after person to be around at the Bezos wedding.
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 Khloe 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.'
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 and Gayle King.
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, stiff palm out, 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 Sanchez on second weddings, but a curious number of guests divorced recently and used the weekend to be noticeably single. Bloom and the astronaut Katy Perry were never technically married, but news of their recent split after nine years together still threatened to steal Sanchez and Bezos' thunder when it broke this week. As it happened, Perry is on tour (on Earth) and couldn't attend.
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 Sanchez
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, 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. Almost the whole gang 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.