Jeff Bezos forced to move wedding venue after locals threaten to block Venice canals

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos has been forced to relocate his lavish Venice wedding celebrations after furious residents threatened to blockade the city’s historic canals with inflatable crocodiles. The 61-year-old had planned to host a star-studded party at the 16th-century Scuola Grande della Misericordia as part of a multi-day wedding celebration with fiancéeLauren Sánchez.

However, amid growing backlash from locals who accused him of “shutting down Venice,” Bezos has reportedly now moved the event to a more secure venue. Some protesters vowed to toss inflatables into the canals, blocking celebrity guests from arriving by gondola or water taxi. “This is a big victory for us,” declared Tommaso Cacciari, a member of the No Space for Bezos protest group. “Who would have thought that we could change the plans of one of the richest men on the planet?”

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The wedding will now take place at the Arsenale - a vast, fortress-like complex of shipyards and warehouses once used to build Venetian warships.

Surrounded by fortified walls and guarded by stone lions at its gates, the site is considered far easier to secure than the originally intended venue.

Escalating tensions in the Middle East and the potential attendance of politically sensitive guests, including Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, have also heightened concerns over security.

“Private events with a high international profile will be monitored closely,” said Darco Pellos, Venice’s police chief.

The couple’s three-day wedding festivities are understood to conclude on Friday, with dozens of private jets now arriving at Venice’s Marco Polo airport.

Flights carrying Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Salma Hayek Pinault, Sir Elton John, and Lady Gaga are expected, among others.
They include Kim Kardashian, Jared Kushner, Karlie Kloss, and Sánchez’s Blue Origin spaceflight crewmates Katy Perry and Gayle King.

Sánchez has said she’s planning the wedding like “every other bride” and even joked on the Today show last year: “I have to say, I do have a Pinterest.”

Yet as Venice braces for the arrival of over 90 private jets and a glittering constellation of celebrity guests, questions remain over whether the event will be marred by protests.

Before the formal events, Bezos and Sánchez hosted a foam party aboard Koru, their £371 million three-masted superyacht.

Anchored off the Croatian coast, the yacht was accompanied by the Abeona, a support vessel complete with helicopter pad.

Bezos, who famously launched a bookselling site from a garage in Seattle in 1994 and transformed it into a global retail empire, was photographed laughing with Sánchez as foam rained down from a giant cannon.

The former TV journalist has become a prominent figure in her soon-to-be husband's public life.

Once a regular on US shows such as 'Extra' and 'The View,' she later founded Black Ops Aviation, one of the first female-owned aerial film and production companies.

Their romance made headlines in 2019 after their relationship was revealed in America’s National Enquirer, leading Bezos to announce his split from his first wife, MacKenzie Scott.

That divorce, finalised later the same year, resulted in Scott receiving a £28 billion settlement, which she has since used to fund charitable efforts around the world.

But this week's spectacle continues to spark fury among Venetians increasingly concerned with overtourism and inequality.

Venice’s main island, home to just 50,000 residents, receives more than 20 million visitors annually. In response, the city recently introduced a five euro daily fee for day-trippers.

On Monday, Greenpeace and the campaign group Everyone Hates Elon staged a protest in St Mark’s Square, unfurling a banner that read: “If you can rent Venice for your wedding, you can pay more tax.”

Clara Thompson, a Greenpeace campaigner, said: “While Venice is sinking under the weight of the climate crisis, billionaires are partying like there is no tomorrow on their mega-yachts.”

“This isn’t just about one person, it’s about changing the rules so no billionaire can dodge responsibility, anywhere.”

The group called for wealth taxes on billionaires, citing Bezos’s fortune and previous expenditure on an 11-minute space trip as evidence of economic imbalance.

“If there was ever a sign that billionaires like Bezos should pay wealth taxes, it’s this,” a spokesman said.

However, a rival campaign, called ’Yes Venice Can’, has emerged in support of the Bezos wedding, claiming it will inject millions into the local economy.

Backed by hoteliers, restaurateurs and local business leaders, the group insisted: “We cannot allow a noisy minority to discredit the image of this city in the eyes of the world.”

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