When staff built a striped tent covering the water taxi dock of the Aman Hotel in Venice, largely hiding the guests arriving for Jeff Bezos’ wedding, it was just another insult to the many sweaty photographers who had been trying to cover an event that has been guarded with a stubborn veil of secrecy.
“Did Bezos arrive yet?” one reporter shouted on Wednesday as she slipped by on a water taxi called “Confusion.”
Nobody knew.
Since their relationship became public six years ago, Ms. Sánchez and Mr. Bezos have seemed to enjoy the limelight. Their romance was on display at Wimbledon, at President Trump’s second inauguration, at countless dinners and galas and in the glossy pages of gossip magazines.
Yet, much about their wedding, in one of the world’s most photographed cities, was being obscured even as the big weekend begins.
It was even unclear whether the couple would technically be married in Venice, or if they would just celebrate their wedding in the city. Until few days ago, the dates were not certain. And even at the most-discussed locations, staffers said they had not been told whose event they were preparing for.
Like many other celebrity couples, Mr. Bezos and Ms. Sánchez have navigated the delicate trade-off between liking the attention and maintaining their privacy.
Cutting communications off before the wedding, experts said, was crucial to ensure only a curated version of the events eventually emerged. But the couple’s need for discretion also seemed to be rooted in the threats by protesters to disrupt the festivities, which appeared to have made them move a party when one location was leaked.
The billionaire’s representatives have largely been mum about any details in the weeks leading up to the event, though a steady stream of tidbits has emerged, including sanctioned statements from the wedding planner and long-range photos of a foam party aboard his $500 million yacht.
Even choosing Venice, a lavish, over the top, but also crowded city, which the couple calls a “magical place” for them, is both a nod to exclusivity and publicity.
Parts of the narrative, however, have been uncontrollable.
When Kim Kardashian arrived at the Venice airport with a slim bandeau top, and her sister Khloe in a leopard print catsuit, their presence was noticed, and photographed. Orlando Bloom was spotted as he socialized with Kim Kardashian on the terrace of the Gritti hotel, closed to public for the event. And the fashion designer Domenico Dolce from Dolce & Gabbana was also photographed at the Gritti.
On Wednesday, too, a smiling Mr. Bezos and Ms. Sánchez, both in sunglasses, made their first appearance, waving at reporters from inside their shimmering wooden motorboat before disappearing inside the Aman Hotel.
They came out again later in the evening to head for dinner at the chandelier-and-chaise decorated home of the fashion designer and socialite Diane von Furstenberg, wife to Barry Diller, the entertainment mogul, who also arrived earlier this week. That dinner included at least some of the Bezos-Sánchez children — they share seven, in total, from previous marriages and relationships.
Reached by phone, Ms. von Furstenberg said she and Mr. Diller had known Mr. Bezos for nearly three decades, and she brushed off the “big fuss” surrounding the nuptials, noting that Venice “is a place where people get married.”
“We have a lot of weddings here,” she said. “I don’t know why everyone is making such a big thing out of this.”
Other guests also began to trickle in, under the watchful eyes of waiting paparazzi. Michael Kives, a former agent, and Lydia Kives, who attended Ms. Sánchez’ bachelorette party in Paris in May, have arrived. Another of Ms. Sánchez’ bachelorettes — Veronica Smiley Grazer, a marketing executive, also boarded the boat from the city’s airport to its center with her husband, the film producer Brian Grazer.
Thursday included the arrival of Ari Emanuel, the Hollywood agent, and his wife, Sarah Staudinger, a fashion designer. Queen Rania of Jordan was spotted, as was Tom Brady, he of seven Super Bowl rings. And Oprah was on the scene.
While locations are still largely unconfirmed, preparations appeared to be underway at several venues, with three main ones most likely hosting events from Thursday to Saturday: the Madonna dell’Orto complex, which contains a church and a cloister; the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, in front of the Doge’s Palace; and the Arsenale, a complex of former shipyards.
Organizers of celebrity weddings said they often generously distributed nondisclosure agreements to staff and providers. Josh Spiegel, the founder of Birch, an American firm that produces celebrity events, added that the secrecy around the wedding did not mean information would not eventually emerge, but it would do so when and how the Sánchez-Bezos couple decided.
The lack of information, and the attempts at surprise, mirrored the efforts to control the message that had been employed at the weddings of other celebrities like Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, and Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost. More recently, the details of Tiffany Trump’s wedding were kept under wraps until the day of the event.
“What you are seeing every day from these people is actually the story that they want you to know,” Mr. Spiegel said.
For now, it is very little. Some paparazzi waited hours, trying to put sunscreen between the straps of their Birkenstocks. Police officers scolded them for eating greasy sandwiches on the docks, a forced choice for them not to lose sight of the Aman, but one that violated Venice’s strict anti-picnic regulations. One tabloid photographer used a kayak to paddle to a possible party locale.
It did not help that many of the superyachts that arrived were chartered, or their ownership was unclear, even though a person with knowledge of Venice’s yachting operators, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said seven vessels related to Ms. Bezos’ wedding had booked a docking spot. One of them was Kismet, owned by the billionaire Shahid Khan and equipped with a dance floor, yoga studio, cinema and underwater seating area. Were Dreams, a yacht which was originally built for a sanctioned Russian oligarch, was also docked in the lagoon, though it was not clear who owned it now.
Such secrecy and scant hard information meant that gossip magazines ran any detail of the event they could get their hands on. To wit: A Daily Mail photographer captured a wedding worker holding a list of staffers, and perhaps some lesser-known guests, arriving at Venice’s airport. New York magazine speculated on whether Mr. Bloom would be alone — amid rumors of a breakup with his wife, Katy Perry, a friend and rocket-mate of Ms. Sánchez’ — and whether or not “he’s gonna hit the dance floor hard.”
Then, too, there was the note to the wedding’s guests, published by Good Morning America, which featured gondolas, birds, butterflies, shooting stars and a dragonfly, and a request for guests not to bring gifts. Instead, it said, the couple would make donations “on your behalf” for research and conservation groups in Venice. (Like many of the elements of the wedding, including reports of a pajama party, the wedding note was dissected, at times unfavorably, online.)
The secrecy also meant sunburned reporters turned to a rigid brand of skepticism amid concerns about nuptial subterfuge. Even as porters carried vintage armchairs and garden chairs inside the cloister at Santa Maria dell’Orto on Thursday afternoon, the suspicious TV crews outside smoked cigarettes and did not buy it.
“They may just be messing with us,” one said.
Emma Bubola is a Times reporter based in Rome.
Jesse McKinley is a Times reporter covering politics, pop culture, lifestyle and the confluence of all three.
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