Even if you weren’t invited to the ostentatious festival of wealth that is Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez’s wedding – for the record, it looks like having your own private jet is the barrier to entry – chances are you will be forcibly brought along for the ride on the internet.
It is without contest the celebrity wedding of the year. Despite essentially renting out the city of Venice, booking out five of the island’s most luxurious hotels and hosting 200 A-list guests for a four-day extravaganza, or the fact Amazon chairman Bezos is the third richest man in the world, the wedding has reportedly come in at a modest €40 million (£34m). Given that Bezos has an estimated net worth of $226.7 billion (£165.12bn), one might have anticipated a bigger budget.
Perhaps we should have guessed after Bezos proposed to Sanchez with a $3-5 million engagement ring, going against the old adage that it should cost three months of your salary, which for him would be an estimated $1.8 billion. He clearly prefers to keep his money in the bank.
Nevertheless, it has quite rightly prompted mass protests from activist groups concerned about the damage the nuptials will do to the world heritage site, Bezos’s knack for dodging tax (one banner filling a city square floor reads ‘If you can rent Venice for your wedding you can pay more tax), and the crudeness of the celebrations in light of ongoing global conflicts and indeed the climate crisis.
In other words, Bezos and Sanchez might have 200 plus celebrities, including the Kardashians and Jenners, Ivanka Trump, Oprah and Orlando Bloom , and their glam squad armies in Venice to celebrate them, but the rest of the world is watching in disbelief. Or so you’d think.
To make matters even bleaker, a lot of the search surrounding Bezos and Sanchez’s wedding is not about the above at all. It’s about ‘Lauren Sanchez then and now’, with particular interest in ‘What cosmetic surgery Lauren Sanchez has had done?' According to Google Trends, 'Jeff Bezos wife before and after' is a breakout search term, as is 'Lauren Sanchez 2010' and 'Lauren Sanchez face surgery'.
This is particularly troubling given that Sanchez has never publicly confirmed having any plastic surgery done and, of course, that there are much more important things to be talking about.
Even so, there are endless social media takes and articles ‘unravelling’ what work she’s had done and ‘calling out’ the ‘terrifying’ procedures Sanchez is rumoured to have had in recent years. This includes everything from breast augmentation to Botox, lip filler, rhinoplasty and a face lift.
There is also search for Sanchez’s wedding looks, which makes a little more sense, especially the rib-crushing, gold Schiaparelli Spring couture dress she wore the day before the ceremony, which reportedly cost $100k (£72k).
While interest in Sanchez as a person has reached fever pitch in the past week, it never seems to take long before it resorts back to her physical appearance.
Onlookers want to understand Sanchez’s so-called ascent to marrying one of the richest men in the world, her career, where she’s from, and even how many times she’s been married. This was fuelled by The Cut’s deep dive into the bride which was published earlier in the week. By all accounts, she is a fun, ambitious and energetic person.
As an American journalist from New Mexico who started her career working at KCOP-TV, a branch of Fox News, it’s true that Sanchez has climbed the social ladder over the years. She’s had romances with NFL stars and hosted popular shows like So You Think You Can Dance and The View, but she only became a global talking point once she started dating Bezos, especially since they were both married to other people at the time. Bezos was with his wife of 25 years and Amazon co-founder, Mackenzie Scott, and Sanchez was married to Hollywood agent Patrick Whitesell.
In 2019, a year after their affair started and both divorced from their partners, the relationship took off. So too did the public’s insatiable interest in Sanchez as a person – something she has very much leaned into. Sanchez and Bezos have willingly embarked on a PR campaign of pomp and ceremony over the years, jetting and sailing around the world in designer clothes, hosting retro foam parties, and often bringing their celebrity friends along with them. Their Venice wedding is, of course, no different.
‘This seems, to me, to be the pinnacle of a long career of social climbing,’ said Matt Beloni, the Hollywood reporter behind The Town podcast. ‘She did it. She made it.’ Speaking to those in her orbit, The Cut’s findings suggest Sanchez is ‘mystically magnetic’ and that ‘Jeff is dazzled’ by her. The paparazzo Jesal Pashotam, who has shot the couple around the world, also suggested Sanchez is ‘down to earth’. This is particularly ironic given that Sanchez has not long returned from an 11-minute joyride to space on Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket.
Pashotam also added that she is ‘very clever’ and ‘just gets the game’. If she does, she’ll understand that speculation around what she used to look like and whether she’s had plastic surgery are par for the course.
If only curious members of the public typing those queries into Google ‘got the game’ too and realised Sanchez’s rumoured surgery is the least of our worries. As Greenpeace campaigner Simona Abbate put it: ‘Our protest isn’t about the wedding itself – it’s about what it represents. This isn’t just a celebration of two people getting married, it’s a display of a lifestyle that’s simply unsustainable. The richest live in excess, while others endure the consequences of a climate emergency they didn’t create.’ Who cares what they look like.
Nikki Peach is a writer at Grazia UK, working across entertainment, TV and news. She has also written for the i, i-D and the New Statesman Media Group and covers all things pop culture for Grazia (treating high and lowbrow with equal respect).