That Time Inflatable Alligators Blocked a Jeff Bezos Wedding

But the morbidly rich keep streaming in anyway

Warning: Not satire. This stuff is actually happening. And Atlas Shrugged.

Jeff Bezos and his Botox bride¹ Lauren Sanchez helicoptered into Venice Wednesday from Bezos’ $500 million yacht to begin their celebration of applying paperwork to their occasional forays into the missionary position.

My busiest image ever! So much going on! Vogue font from the interwebs; fair use claim; Image of floating money licensed from Adobe Stock; Image of Lauren Sanchez by Angela Kohler, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Image of Jeff Bezos by Steve Jurvetson, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; image of helicopter by Jeff Pearce via Flickr; image smashup by author

Presumably, they didn’t fly in on a TrumpCopter (as pictured), and, also presumably, Lauren, who is a helicopter pilot, was flying, but since I wasn’t invited to the soirée, I can’t be sure.

The guest roster, which looks like a page out of Vogue Oligarch, is headlined by Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, who is taking time out from his plans for the Kushner Beachfront Estates in Gaza.

Oprah Winfrey and Mick Jagger will be there, too, which is kind of gross. So much for me rocking to Stones music during my sunset years and stalking Oprah to get her to include one of my books in her do or die bookclub.

Leonardo DiCaprio is also showing up, which is a sign that the event will be flooded with a multitude of unknown nubile young women who are just now sneaking into their twenties.

Orlando Bloom will be there for some reason, too. Kim Kardashian wouldn’t miss this event if you offered to pay for her plastic surgery for the rest of her life.

No word on whether a Joe Biden clone is expected to appear, but that seems about right. You can almost be sure Bill Clinton will find a way to sniff his way around.

In all, 90 private jets are expected to alight at Venice’s Marco Polo airport in a gilded age celebration of the end of Climate Change activism among Hollywood’s once conflicted elite.

These days, that conflict is over. Hollywood has embraced Trumpism and all that it represents, especially the international rich parties on multimillion-dollar yachts far from the prying eyes of the few remaining law enforcement agencies still interested in making a token effort against Diddy Kiddy culture.

Activists under the banner “No Space for Bezos” have crashed the wedding by threatening to drop inflatable alligators into Venetian canals around the party venue at the Scuola Grande della Misericordia.

Image of the Scuola Grande della Misericordia by Dimitris Kamaras from Athens, Greece, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The party was scheduled there for Saturday, but the threats of inflatable alligators spooked the guests, so the venue was changed to the Arsenale shipyards, which I guess is more difficult for inflatable alligators to attack.

One of the scheduled events will probably (unconfirmed) include Oprah screaming during the gala, “You get a Lamborghini, and you get a Lamborghini and you get a Lamborghini,” as the expensive cars dangle tantalizingly from helicopters overhead.

According to Luca Zaia, president of the Venetian regional government, the wedding will cost $46.5 - $55.6 million.

That’s a lot more than most rich people spend on a yacht, much less a wedding.

But Bezos’ yacht, The Koru, is no ordinary rich man’s yacht.

The Koru’s builder, Oceanco, was fined $158,000 for using something referred to as conflict wood. In this case, conflict wood means teak harvested from the jungles of Myanmar, which has experienced conflict between impoverished people attempting to live their lives and a government that would rather they didn’t.

The yacht’s construction, according to Luxurylanches.com, “violated the European Timber Regulation, which prohibits the import of illegally logged timber:”

Though banned, Myanmar teak is revered as ‘the Rolls-Royce of woods,’ celebrated for its unparalleled strength and natural oil-rich resilience. Moreover, it is specifically favored by shipbuilders for its strength, anti-slip properties, and resistance to rot. As a tropical wood, it stays cool under the sun, allowing Bezos and his fiancée Lauren to comfortably walk barefoot on the deck.

Isn’t that sweet?

According to that same publication, the yacht is longer than two Airbus A380 passenger jets and costs Bezos $137,000 per day to maintain and/or sail.

What makes the Koru even more interesting is that it sports a baby yacht called the Abeona, which, at 250 feet long, is big enough to include a helipad. So it does, according to Boat International.²

Luxurylaunches also notes that the yacht’s prow “features a masterfully crafted sculpture bearing an uncanny resemblance to Lauren.”

My friends, you can’t make this shit up.

Meanwhile, the Republican Congress wants to snatch more money away from you. Don’t let them. Here’s an action link(!):

Tell Your Senators: Don't cut health care & food assistance to give another tax cut to the rich

Notes

h/t Scott Dworkin on the action link.

Disclaimer, since many of my regular readers know I write a lot of satire: This is not satire. Except for Oprah’s car giveaway. I made that up. But if it happens, do not be at all surprised.

Some of the info about the wedding can be found here, which is where I first heard about it (I usually make it a point to stay away from celebrity culture):

Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Forge Ahead With Venice Wedding

Vogue Oligarch isn’t real. I made that up, sillies.

Footnotes

1. StyleCaster Editors. 2025. “Lauren Sánchez Called out for ‘Terrifying’ Rumored Plastic Surgery Procedures before Her Wedding to Jeff Bezos.” Yahoo Entertainment. June 24, 2025. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/articles/lauren-nchez-called-terrifying-rumored-163841829.html

2. Damborsky, Katia. 2023. “75m Custom Damen Yachting Support Vessel Delivered and Named.” Boatinternational.com. Boat International. February 2, 2023. https://www.boatinternational.com/yachts/news/damen-75m-support-yacht-abeona.