The Bezos Wedding in Venice Is a Grotesque Monument to Billionaire Decadence
- Connor Banks
- Jun 27
- 3 min read
While billions struggle to stay afloat, some quite literally, Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez are busy turning Venice into their personal playground of excess. This week, as they descend upon one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable cities in a flotilla of private yachts and chartered jets, the spectacle isn't just nauseating. It’s morally repugnant.
Let’s be clear: they have the right to throw a wedding wherever and however they like. No laws are being broken. But we shouldn’t confuse legality with legitimacy, or wealth with worth. Bezos’s Venetian wedding, a rumoured €48 million orgy of extravagance, is a grotesque display of late-stage capitalism at its most depraved. It’s not just tone-deaf; it’s a megaphoned insult to a world on fire.
The symbolism writes itself. Venice, a city literally sinking into the Adriatic Sea thanks to rising sea levels, is being used as a backdrop for a celebration paid for by a man whose fortune is built on a carbon-belching, warehouse-exploiting corporate empire. Amazon, the giant he built, emitted over 70 million metric tons of CO₂e in 2022,more than some small nations. But hey, at least the wedding favours are made of Murano glass.
Let’s also talk about that €1 million “gift to Venice”, touted as a charitable gesture. For Jeff Bezos, that’s the financial equivalent of flicking a penny at a drowning man and expecting applause. His net worth hovers around $230 billion. If you earned $60,000 a year, it would be like donating less than a quarter to save a city. We are witnessing philanthropy as PR, a token to paper over what is fundamentally a ritual of obscene consumption.
Defenders will say this is good for the local economy. A cash injection for hoteliers, caterers, water-taxi companies. But trickle-down decadence is not a model of social justice. Local Venetians are being priced out of their homes while billionaire weddings rent out entire districts for a long weekend of influencer selfies and champagne-fuelled nostalgia.
Even the guest list is a caricature of elite detachment: Ivanka Trump, Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DiCaprio, those who speak of justice and climate on one hand while jetting around on the other. It's the ruling class cosplaying care while actively entrenching inequality and ecological collapse.
This is not just a wedding. It's a manifestation of power, an unapologetic flaunting of the ability to bend cities, people, and even climate responsibility to one’s will. It’s Versailles on water. And just like Versailles, it’s built on the backs of those struggling to survive.
When billionaires celebrate themselves in cities being swallowed by the consequences of their industries, it’s not a party. It’s a funeral for accountability.
We are told, often and loudly, that we should admire these people. That they are visionaries. That they’ve "earned it." But wealth this excessive can only ever be accumulated through exploitation of workers, of the environment, of political systems that protect hoarding over redistribution. There is nothing admirable about it. There is only extraction.
If Jeff Bezos truly wanted to honour Venice, he’d leave it alone. He’d pay his workers a living wage. He’d use his platform to tax wealth and decarbonise the economy, not to host foam parties aboard a $500 million superyacht named Koru.
Until then, let’s call this wedding what it is: an emblem of grotesque inequality, a love letter to excess, and a middle finger to a world drowning in the very consequences of the billionaire class.