Featured Image Credit: Emma McIntyre/Getty
Topics: Celebrity, Jeff Bezos, Sex and Relationships, World News
Lucy Devine
Topics: Celebrity, Jeff Bezos, Sex and Relationships, World News
Protestors in Venice are claiming victory this week after Jeff Bezos changed his '$15,000,000' wedding plans.
Billionaire Bezos and fiancée Lauren Sanchez got engaged in May 2023, and they're finally set to tie the knot this week, according to reports.
However, it's been reported that their lavish plans have been disrupted at the last minute over a number of threats.
Bezos and Sanchez were apparently supposed to be getting hitched at the Scuola Grande della Misericordia in Venice over the weekend, but according to the BBC, this has now been moved to Arsenale, further away from the centre of the city.
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This change comes after activists in the region threatened to fill Venice's canals with inflatable crocodiles, in order to stop the wedding guests from arriving.
"We are very proud of this! We are nobodies, we have no money, nothing!" Tommaso Cacciari, a member of a group that calls itself the No Space for Bezos group, told the BBC.
"We're just citizens who started organising and we managed to move one of the most powerful people in the world - all the billionaires - out of the city."
Meanwhile, earlier this week, activists from a group called 'Everyone Hates Elon' unveiled a huge poster of Bezos alongside the caption 'If you can rent Venice for your wedding then you can pay more tax'.
The gigantic poster could be seen in Piazza San Marco, Venice's main public square.
According to reports, the likes of Katy Perry, Oprah Winfrey, Mick Jagger, and Ivanka Trump could be attending the lavish nuptials.
Last year, it was claimed that Bezos and Sanchez would be spending $600 million on the wedding, but the Amazon founder refuted these claims.
New reports have instead suggested that Bezos and Sanchez could be spending between $15 million to $20 million, per Mail Online.
It's also believed that guests will be jetting to Venice from all over the world in their own privately owned planes, which have now been calculated to emit the same amount of carbon dioxide emissions as 27,300 cars produce daily.
According to the Italian publication Affaritaliani, around 96 private jets are set to land at the city for the three-day event.
Greenpeace told the Guardian: “Bezos embodies an economic and social model that is leading us towards collapse."
Despite reports over the inflatable alligators, local press reports that the venue change was also due to security concerns over the ongoing situation between Iran and Israel.
According to the Guardian, one activist claimed: “The crocodile initiative would have given a bad impression of the city – this is why the venue was changed even if the authorities might try to claim it was because of the war.”
UNILAD has reached out to Sanchez and Bezos for comment.