VENICE, Italy (AP) — Oprah Winfrey arrived in Venice on Thursday, main a star-studded visitor record of celebrities descending on the lagoon metropolis for the weekend marriage ceremony of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez.
Winfrey’s personal jet landed at Venice’s Marco Polo airport. Former American footballer Tom Brady arrived quickly thereafter.
Former NFL quarterback Tom Brady, middle, arrives for the weekend marriage ceremony of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, in Venice, Italy, Thursday, June 26, 2025. (AP Photograph/Luca Bruno)
The bride and groom pulled into the Aman Lodge dock on the Grand Canal on Wednesday, touring through water taxi with safety boats in tow. Just a few hours later they slipped out of the lodge, with Sánchez carrying a modern black and white striped, one-shoulder robe.
The main points of the nuptials have been a tightly stored secret, although the places now seem to have firmed up as has the visitor record.
Ivanka Trump, her husband Jared Kushner and their three youngsters arrived Wednesday.
Different celebrities on the visitor record, in keeping with two individuals near the marriage who spoke on situation of anonymity, as a result of they weren’t approved to talk publicly, embrace:
— Kim Kardashian
— Mick Jagger
— Leonardo DiCaprio
— Orlando Bloom
— Microsoft founder Invoice Gates
— Diane von Furstenberg and her husband Barry Diller
— Katy Perry had initially been anticipated however the newest replace had her as not attending.
The marriage has divided Venice, with some activists protesting it as an exploitation of the town by the billionaire Bezos whereas abnormal residents undergo from overtourism, excessive housing prices and the fixed risk of climate-induced flooding.
One group known as Extinction Rise up staged a small protest in St. Mark’s Sq. on Thursday that includes a masked bride and groom and other people holding posters decrying local weather change and revenue inequalities.
“The planet is burning however don’t fear, right here’s the record of the 27 clothes of Lauren Sanchez,” learn one, a reference to the bride’s reported marriage ceremony weekend wardrobe.
Protesters mentioned that their plans to disrupt the arrivals of visitors at one of many marriage ceremony venues compelled organizers to maneuver the occasion to the safer Arsenale space past Venice’s congested middle.
The town administration has strongly defended the nuptials as holding with Venice’s custom as an open metropolis that has welcomed popes, emperors and abnormal guests alike for hundreds of years.
“We’ll at all times respect the appropriate to talk out, however we reject each type of intolerance and prejudice,” Mayor Luigi Brugnaro mentioned in Thursday’s version of Italian newspaper Il Foglio Quotidiano. “Nobody in Venice can declare the appropriate of deciding who can enter, who can love, who can rejoice.”