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I realize that this is not the time to be defending billionaires—this new, actually-good season of The Gilded Age aside. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his friends in the 0.01 percent shoulder much of the blame for our extreme income inequality, the planet’s being on fire, and the near-collapse of democracy and constitutional order. And when he’s not busy trying to crush labor rights or destroy the legacy of the Washington Post, Bezos has been cozying up to President Donald Trump, while his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, models herself as a climate activist who somehow still takes 11-minute flights into space.
What’s more, the couple’s wedding this week—promoted in seemingly every news outlet on the planet—will likely cost tens of millions of dollars, is enraging local Italians in Venice, and will no doubt be a tribute to vulgar extravagance that would make the writers of Succession wince. (Just check out the Microsoft Clip Art–esque wedding invitation.) “What happened to understatement and restraint?” Amy Odell wrote in the New York Times on Wednesday. “As much as those with more understated taste might turn up their noses at the crassness of the Bezos-Sánchez wedding’s display, tacky is very clearly carrying the day.”
I know. I know. It’s all galling. And yet … even as part of me hopes the happy couple blasts off on one of his Blue Origin rockets and never comes back, another part of me is, against my better judgment, charmed by the pair’s audacious and tacky love for each other. Theirs is a tabloid love that’s loud and flashy and doesn’t care what you think. In fact, it knows what you think and it still doesn’t care. It’s shameless and gaudy, but I have to sort of respect it—envy it, even, if just a little. I may hate them, but I kinda love their love.
Ever since the now-61-year-old Bezos and the 55-year-old Sánchez were forced to go public with their relationship in 2019 (while they were both still somewhat inconveniently married to their former spouses), the couple have made a point of rubbing the world’s faces in their midlife crises and their attraction to each other. They were suddenly on red carpets at the Met Gala and the Vanity Fair Oscar Party. They roped in Annie Leibovitz to take photos of them for Vogue cosplaying as cowboys. He had a full-bosomed sculpture affixed to his superyacht that, even if it weren’t really modeled on Sánchez, bore a striking resemblance to her. It’s aboard the deck of the ship where the pair were photographed on Sunday during a foam party—yes, a foam party—somewhere in Europe, tossing beach balls and embracing.
This is, as you can see, a deeply unserious duo. They are some of the most absurd and ridiculous idiots on the planet, constantly doing the most, but constantly doing the most with each other. It is garish, sure, but can you name another billionaire enjoying themself more? “Everything in their joint universe is Big, Bigger, Biggest,” Carrie Battan wrote last week for the Cut. “Flying private has been usurped by space travel. The skirts of the designer gowns are doubly voluminous. … [T]here seems to be no question: Sánchez knows how to have fun.”
To be clear, Bezos is the personification of a Divorced Man. Yet there is something oddly comforting knowing that the fourth-richest man in the world is still just another man, prone to blowing up his life at the sight of a beautiful woman to whom he would send dopey texts that purportedly included the timeless phrase “I love you, alive girl.” True to the stereotype, Bezos started packing on muscle in 2017, conveniently the year after he first met Sánchez at a party for the controversial Casey Affleck vehicle Manchester by the Sea—a meet-cute that has more cursed energy than anything I’ve ever heard of. I bet he even bought himself a new sports car or a whole new company that manufactures them.
But it’s obviously not just Bezos’ appearance that has changed since his indescribably expensive divorce from MacKenzie Scott, who seems intent on living as differently from her ex as she can, establishing a reputation as a generous but discreet philanthropist and quietly marrying (then later divorcing) a science teacher. Bezos’ whole vibe is different. He’s suddenly showy and confident, which is a weird thing to say about someone who has been so rich for so long. Even if the entire world is rolling their eyes or muttering about gold diggers, his relationship with Sánchez genuinely seems to be making him happy, which is all you can really hope for at the end of the day. (After all, other wealthy men have looked way more ridiculous dating women with far more egregious age gaps.) Seeing the pictures of him cavorting in foam, it’s impossible not to think of him as being on spring break; in a way, he is now living out the 20s his dorky self never had. It’s like the nerd-billionaire version of being a gay man. Hey, I get it!!!
Sánchez, meanwhile, seems more than ready to formally begin her life as Mrs. Bezos. Whether she’s posting pictures on Instagram of Bezos and her smooching, of them meeting the late pope, or of private moments of her fiancé working, it’s hard not to see her as flaunting her big score. But, hey, even if you assume the worst about her and her intentions, you’ve got to respect the hustle. “This seems, to me, to be the pinnacle of a long career of social climbing,” influential Hollywood reporter Matt Belloni told the Cut, adding, “She did it. She made it.”
Let me reiterate, for those of you about to burn an effigy of me in the comments section: This wedding and its possible $50 million price tag are disgusting. Amazon is (some say) an anticompetitive monopoly, and Bezos’ unimaginable wealth (I say) is profoundly immoral. (“If you can rent Venice for your wedding you can pay more tax,” read a Greenpeace banner unfurled in St Mark’s Square on Monday, which … fair enough!!)
But Bezos and Sánchez are entitled to their over-the-top love and happiness, and they are entitled to rub our faces in it. After all, “rubbing their faces in it” is one of the reasons many people choose to have a wedding to begin with. There is, of course, something tastefully noble in living your life and loving your love as if you were dancing with no one else watching. But there’s also something to be said for loving as if everyone is watching, and putting on a damn good show.
