Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos’ Venice wedding was one of the ugliest and tackiest extravaganzas I’ve ever seen. I had gotten so used to celebrities attempting their version of “classy,” Pinterest-friendly weddings. It was shocking to see such excess and such an aversion to optics and aesthetics. It reminds me of those photos of the Trump inaugural parties and all of the white supremacists trying to act like they were cool and having such a good time… and they all just came across as vulgar, garish and monstrous. There was a fundamental try-hard quality to it all, which is part of the MAGA movement and includes Trump-supporters like Bezos and Sanchez. Speaking of, the Daily Beast Podcast tried to put their finger on exactly why no one was buying what Bezos and Sanchez were selling:
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez’s lavish nuptials spiraled into a tone-deaf circus that laid bare the grotesque gap between the ultra-rich and working Americans, according to writer Liz Plank. Plank, an award-winning journalist, joined The Daily Beast Podcast to discuss her viral Substack article on the multimillion-dollar, celebrity-stacked celebration in Venice, Italy, over the weekend. “Paper Straws for You, Private Jets for Them,” she titled the piece.
The controversial three-day affair drew local protests and eye-rolling around the world, but in Plank’s eyes, ultimately, the billionaire couple did it anyway because “they’re rich, but they probably want to be cool even more.”
“People who have a lot of money and feel secure in that don’t do these lavish displays of wealth. To your point, they do private things,” Plank told host Joanna Coles. “I think it was almost less about the money and more about, ‘Look at all these friends that we have. Look at all these fancy people who like us.’”
The 200 guests of the Amazon founder and former journalist included Leonardo DiCaprio, Orlando Bloom, Tom Brady, much of the Kardashian clan, Oprah Winfrey, Gayle King, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Karlie Kloss and husband Joshua Kushner, Usher, and Sydney Sweeney. Many of them arrived on private jets, with more than 95 reportedly expected to land in the historic city that is at real risk of disappearing under rising sea levels.
Coles suggested the brash display happened, perhaps in part because Donald Trump—a man whose maximalist inclinations have left the Oval Office draped in gold—“has given permission to everybody to release their inner vulgarian.”
“It used to be that billionaires were, for the most part, relatively discreet about their wealth,” Coles observed. “Now it seems to be like, ‘No, we’re going to show off as much as we possibly can, and we’re really going to enjoy it.’”
“No, we’re going to show off as much as we possibly can, and we’re really going to enjoy it.” That’s just it – it wasn’t like Bezos and Sanchez were really “enjoying” it or reveling in decadence. They invited/paid dozens of celebrities to show up to their wedding, they weren’t even surrounded by their closest friends (if they even have close friends) and the whole thing came across as miserable to some extent. Now, I think Lauren probably had a good time, but that speaks to her own vulgarity.
What else? Apparently, Bezos “begged” to see Lauren’s dress before the wedding because he was so excited about it, and she almost let him see it. That’s supposedly a wedding curse – the groom is never supposed to see the wedding gown before the wedding day. It brings bad luck. Lauren probably should have let him see it.
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Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images. Cover courtesy of Vogue.
