If Donald Trump can send U.S. Marines to Los Angeles to deter protests against his administration’s immigration sweeps, maybe Amazon founder Jeff Bezos figures it’s worth following the president’s lead by reportedly using Marine muscle to provide security for his and Lauren Sanchez’s lavish three-day wedding in Venice, which has spurred local anger and growing protests by international groups.
As Bezos and the former TV personality partied on his mega-yacht before arriving in Venice for this week’s wedding, protesters have vowed to blockade the city’s canals and ports and to picket the wedding venue, whose location has not yet been made public.
CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos and partner Lauren Sanchez attend the Vanity Fair Oscar Party at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, California, on March 2, 2025. (Photo by Michael Tran / AFP) (Photo by MICHAEL TRAN/AFP via Getty Images)
On Monday, the international environmental group Greenpeace and the U.K.-based collective, Everyone Hates Elon, essentially took over the lagoon city’s St. Mark’s Square, a leading world tourist destination, by unfurling a gigantic banner protesting Bezos and Sanchez’s extravagant display of wealth and power.
“If you can rent Venice for your wedding, you can pay more tax,” said the words on the banner, written across a large, black-and-white photo of a laughing Bezos.
This celebrity couple’s destination wedding is expected to take place sometime this week, with festivities possibly beginning Thursday and going through Saturday, the New York Times reported. The Daily Mail reported t hat the ceremony will take place Friday on San Giorgio Maggiore, one of the islands of Venice, known for its landmark Palladian church.
“Bezos will never get to the Misericordia,” protest organizer Federica Toninelli told a crowd last week, referring to a historic 14th-century armory that could be the ceremony location, the New York Times and other outlets reported. “We will block the canals, line the streets with our bodies, block the canals with inflatables, dinghies, boats.”
Activists of international environmental group Greenpeace deploy a giant banner displaying a picture of Jeff Bezos and reading “If you can rent Venice for your wedding you can pay more tax” at St Mark square in Venice on June 23, 2025. Venice will host the wedding of Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos and journalist Lauren Sanchez before the end of the month with more than 200 guests expected to attend. (Photo by Stefano Rellandini / AFP) (Photo by STEFANO RELLANDINI/AFP via Getty Images)
Another protester promised the event will be remembered for the backlash rather than its opulent attendees, adding, “We can’t miss a chance to disrupt a $10-million wedding.”
In response to any attempted disruptions, Bezos has drafted former U.S. Marines to provide security, further heightening tensions in the city, the Daily Beast reported. Bezos also may be eager to protect his celebrity guests from having to move through a gauntlet of protesters, potentially calling them out for supporting the extravagance of “oligarchs” like Bezos and Sanchez who publicly embraced Trump’s leadership by standing with him at his inauguration in January.
A-list guests will reportedly include Kim Kardashian, Oprah Winfrey, Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, Gayle King, Eva Longoria and Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump.
The Daily Mail reported that Bezos and Sanchez have taken other precautions in response to planned protests and global tensions. They won’t be sailing their $500 million yacht, the Koru, to Venice and mooring it offshore. They will instead keep it off the coast of Croatia and fly into Venice on one of their helicopters.
City officials also have taken precautions, according to the Daily Beast. They have block-booked the city’s nine yacht ports, reserved a large number of Venice’s iconic water taxis, banned drones in Venetian airspace and closed off a variety of iconic venues and event spaces from the public in an effort to keep protesters out, CNN also reported.
Bezos and Sanchez’s wedding organizer, Lanza & Baucina Limited, has hit back at claims that the couple’s wedding party is “taking over” the city. Its owners, minor royals Prince Antonio Licata di Baucina and Count Riccardo Lanza, insisted in a statement to Page Six that they were told by the couple to minimize any disruption to the city and to show “respect for its residents and institutions.” They also said that a large quantity of water taxis and gondolas have not been pre-booked for the wedding, no more than are necessary to accommodate their guests.
The Washington Post owner, worth more than $200 billion, has also tried to curry favor with city officials by making substantial donations to a number of local charities and sourcing around 80 percent of the wedding’s provisions from local vendors, CNN also reported.
But protest organizers have tried to whip up resistance to the latest massive event that they say has turned their hometown and world heritage site — which has long suffered from the effects of excessive tourism — into a playground for the rich, as The Guardian reported.
They object to municipal leaders allowing massively wealthy people like Bezos and Sanchez to bring Venice “to a standstill” by taking over certain parts of the city, rendering neighborhoods and landmarks “inaccessible” to regular people and to thousands of regular tourists visiting daily at this time of year. Locals also expressed concern about the disruptions to people’s daily lives due to the need to provide security for top-tier guests, and they even blame rising housing costs and a dwindling resident population on the influx of ultra-wealthy people.
The possible presence of Ivanka Trump and of her husband Jared Kushner may not “bode well” for some organizers, The Guardian reported. It serves as a reminder that Bezos, Sanchez and other tech billionaires showed their embrace of Trump’s leadership at his inauguration, offering a display of “oligarchy” and the powerful influence they expect to wield in Trump’s America, as The Guardian reported in January.