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The wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez is coming to Venice, whether residents like it or not. The Amazon founder is sailing his $500 million superyacht into the Italian city for a ceremony that’s set to span multiple days next week, and locals have been up in arms protesting about overtourism and the idea that the unique and historic city can be “sold to the highest bidder.”
If the happy couple can make out the clamor of outrage from inside their cocoon of wealth and luxury, they’ll almost certainly be used to it by now. Their relationship has never been far from scandal.
When Bezos, 61, and Sánchez, 55, first met, they were both married to other people. Shortly after their affair became public knowledge it snowballed into an international scandal when Bezos accused National Enquirer owner David Pecker of attempting to blackmail him over photographs he’d allegedly sent to Sánchez depicting his “semi-erect manhood.”
Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, implied the leak could be the work of the Saudi Arabian government, although it was later blamed on Sánchez’s brother.
In the years since their engagement, Bezos has stepped down as Amazon CEO and dedicated more of his time to his space tourism company, Blue Origin. Earlier this year, he sent Sánchez on a brief trip into the stratosphere along with celebrities such as Katy Perry, a controversial stunt that was criticized and mocked for its wastefulness.
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Here, we look back at a timeline of Bezos and Sánchez’s relationship, and the journey that has taken them from tabloid scandal to their lavish Venice nuptials.
January 2019 – Bezos and his first wife MacKenzie Scott announce their divorce
Bezos met his first wife, MacKenzie Scott, in 1992, when they were both working at hedge fund D. E. Shaw & Co. in New York. They married after just three months of dating, and in 1994, both quit their jobs to found Amazon in a rented garage in Washington.
After over 25 years of marriage, the couple issued a joint statement on January 9, 2019, reading: “We want to make people aware of a development in our lives. As our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends.”
February 2019 – ‘Bezos exposes Pecker’
On January 10, 2019, a day after Bezos and Scott announced their divorce, the National Enquirer ran a story exposing the fact that Bezos had been having an affair with Sánchez, the wife of talent agent and WME CEO Patrick Whitesell, since long before he separated from Scott.
The report included text messages Bezos had sent as far back as April 2018, with the billionaire telling her: “I love you, alive girl. I will show you with my body, and my lips and my eyes, very soon” and “I want to smell you, I want to breathe you in. I want to hold you tight.… I want to kiss your lips…. I love you. I am in love with you.”
Along with the messages, the National Enquirer also claimed to be in possession of intimate photos Bezos had reportedly sent to Sánchez.
This scandal came to a head the following month, when Bezos published a blog post on February 7, 2019, accusing American Media, Inc’s David Pecker, the owner of the National Enquirer, of “extortion and blackmail” for threatening to publish intimate photos of Bezos and Sánchez if he did not stop his investigation into how his text messages and other photos had been leaked to the tabloid.
Bezos’s post included internal National Enquirer emails describing the pictures in question, with one described as a “below the belt selfie — otherwise colloquially known as a ‘d*** pick’” and another as showing: “A shirtless Mr. Bezos holding his phone in his left hand — while wearing his wedding ring. He’s wearing either tight black cargo pants or shorts — and his semi-erect manhood is penetrating the zipper of said garment.”
Rival publication the New York Post memorably covered the affair under the headline: “Bezos exposes Pecker.”
March 2019 – Saudia Arabia gets the blame
Gavin de Becker, a security consultant employed by Bezos to head up the investigation into the leaks, claimed in March 2019 that he believed that the Saudi Arabian government had hacked Bezos’s iPhone as retaliation for the Washington Post reporting that Saudi agents had murdered its columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
The following January, this allegation was supported by United Nations officials who claimed to be “reasonably certain” Saudi Arabia had been involved.
However, American Media, Inc. has always maintained that their only source for the story was Sánchez’s brother, Michael. It has been reported that Michael Sánchez was paid $200,000 for sharing texts and photos with the Enquirer. He subsequently brought a defamation lawsuit against Bezos, denying he had been the source for the naked photos, but this suit was thrown out by a judge.
In a statement to TMZ, Lauren Sánchez backed this version of events and said: “Michael is my older brother. He secretly provided my most personal information to the National Enquirer — a deep and unforgivable betrayal. My family is hurting over this new baseless and untrue lawsuit, and we truly hope my brother finds peace.”
April 2019 – Bezos’s divorce from Scott is finalized
Relatively swift divorce proceedings between Bezos and Scott were completed by April 2019. At the time, Bezos was the world’s richest man, with an estimated net worth of over $137 billion. The divorce agreement left Scott with $35.6 billion in Amazon stock, with Bezos retaining the remaining 75% of the couple’s Amazon stock and all voting rights.
Scott immediately became the third-wealthiest woman in the world.
February 2021 – Bezos steps down as Amazon CEO
Bezos announced he was stepping down from the day-to-day running of Amazon, the online bookstore that became one of the biggest retailers in world history, although he has remained as the company’s Executive Chair.
In a letter to employees, he said he would be focusing on the “Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, and The Washington Post.”
May 2023 – We’re on a boat: Bezos and Sánchez get engaged
After several years of dating, Bezos proposed to Sánchez by leaving an engagement ring under her pillow after a starlit dinner on board his $500 million megayacht in May 2023.
“When he opened the box, I think I blacked out a bit,” she told Vogue, adding that the proposal was so unexpected that she had already removed her make-up and was ready to go to bed.
The ring itself features a 20-carat, $2.5 million pink diamond.
January 2025 – Bezos and Sánchez attend Trump inauguration
Bezos and Sánchez made a high-profile appearance together with fellow billionaires Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk at the inauguration of President Trump.
In a show of power, they sat directly behind Trump’s family.
March 2025 – Wedding invitations sent out
In March, Bezos and Sánchez sent out invitations to their “summer wedding in Italy.” Earlier that month, Sánchez and Bezos had made another well-publicized appearance together at the Vanity Fair party following the Oscars, where she wore a bridal gown and he told The Independent about his plans for the James Bond franchise, recently acquired by Amazon.
April 2025 – Sánchez (and Katy Perry) go to space, briefly
Sánchez was part of an all-female crew that took a controversial 11-minute expedition to the edge of space with Bezos’s company Blue Origin. Also on board were pop star Katy Perry, TV host Gayle King, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen and film producer Kerianne Flynn.
The trip was widely criticized as wasteful, with actor Olivia Munn asking: “What’s the point? Is it historic that you guys are going on a ride? I think it’s a bit gluttonous.”
May 2025 – Sánchez throws star-studded bachelorette party with Kim Kardashian in Paris
In May, Sánchez celebrated her bachelorette party in Paris with a host of A-listers. She shared a series of black and white photos on Instagram depicting herself with the likes of Kim Kardashian, Katy Perry, Kris Jenner, and Eva Longoria.
“Forever starts with friendship, surrounded by the women who’ve lifted me up, illuminated my path in dark times, and shaped my heart along the way,” she wrote in the caption.
June 2025 – Furious Venice locals protest wedding
Venetians rose up in protest at Bezos and Sánchez’s garish wedding plans. Demonstrators took to the Rialto bridge — one of the city’s most famous landmarks — where they hung a giant banner reading “No Space for Bezos.”
One of the protesters, Marta Sottoriva, told The Independent that allowing the billionaire to have his wedding in Venice creates the idea that “a city can be sold to the highest bidder with the most money.”
