Exclusive | Helicopters, protests and the Clooney connection: Everything to know…
May 25, 2025
Global power players will gather this summer for the union of two very different couples whose combined worth is more than the GDP of some countries.
There will be a $500 million super yacht, private jets, helicopters, Hollywood stars, protest drama — and enough security to make even Prince Harry feel safe
On June 14, Hillary Clinton’s former aide Huma Abedin will wed Alex Soros, the scion of liberal billionaire George Soros, in the Hamptons.
Days later, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez — still flying high from her 11-minute space trip in April — will be jetting their nearest and dearest to Venice, Italy, for a June 24-26 celebration that Page Six is told will cost $10 million and is being organized by George and Amal Clooney’s wedding planners.
Multiple sources tell us the main ceremony will not be held on Bezos’ super yacht, Koru, Page Six is told, but on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore (though that’s yet to be confirmed by reps).
Despite the glitz and the prospect of Kris Jenner — who attended Sánchez’s Parisian bachelorette party last week — showing off her new $200,000 facelift aboard a gondola, the Bezos-Sánchez wedding is under threat by Venetians who don’t want billionaires in their waterfront city.
“We are planning protests to coincide with the Bezos wedding to highlight how the mayor has sold out the city,” Venetian activist Ruggero Tallon told Page Six this week. “This city is not for sale, it is not a playground for the rich.”
But that’s what it will be over the three-day affair — with a guest list that includes a slew of Trumps, from Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump to Don Trump Jr. and his new girlfriend Bettina Anderson; as well as billionaire Barry Diller and his wife Diane Von Furstenberg, Kris Jenner and Kim Kardashian.
Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom are invited, as are Eva Longoria and husband José Bastón, and Hollywood power player and investment fund founder Michael Kives with his wife, Lydia. But while they all got invites, it’s not yet known who will actually be there, sources cautioned.
Bezos, 61, and Sanchez, 55, flew to Italy in April and are working with wedding planners Lanza & Baucina, who oversaw the Clooney wedding.
The team’s website notes: “discretion is paramount to us…we have no social media presence and no examples of previous work are published.”
There will be fewer than 200 guests, we’re told. “For some people that seems big, but not for them,” said a source in the know.
This week, tourism sources confirmed to Page Six the couple had booked five hotels for their guests; the Aman Canal Grand Hotel, where George Clooney married wife Amal in 2013; the Danieli, the Belmond Cipriani, the Gritti Palace and the St. Regis.
The city’s water taxis have also been booked well in advance, a driver told us. We’re also told there may be local excursions on the Koru yacht.
The couple is using local businesses and resources — “They’re not flying stuff in, they felt really strongly about that,” said the source — but even that likely won’t be enough to shield them from controversy.
Venice mayor Luigi Brugnaro has pledged that the nuptials will not bring any “abnormal disruption” to the city. “We are mutually working and supporting the organizers, to ensure that the event will be absolutely respectful of the fragility and uniqueness of the city,” he has said.
Locals are upset over housing costs and overtourism that has led to a fee for day trippers to the city that is threatened by rising sea levels.
“This city is in chaos, there are not enough services and our mayor has deserted the city,” Tallon, who is also part of a campaign against cruise ships making stops at Venice, told Page Six.
Venice City Council member Giovanni Andrea Martini has written to Bezos asking the billionaire to make a donation to support of building restoration and public housing.
“It would be a gift for Venice,” he told Page Six. “We have 1200 empty buildings.”
The Amazon founder has not yet publicly responded.
Last weekend, Bezos held his bachelor party in Madrid, dining with pals at Ten con Ten, a trendy spot in the Salamanca neighborhood.
Bachelorette Sánchez, meanwhile, flew to Paris with her best girlfriends — including Kim Kardashian and Kris Jenner, Eva Longoria, Katy Perry and Lydia Kives. Their itinerary included dinner at the Cheval Blanc hotel and a boat ride on the Seine, as well as posing for lots and lots of social media photos.
Also in attendance were her younger sister Elana and Tobie Gonzales, the wife of former NFL player Tony Gonzalez who is the father of Sánchez’s oldest son, Nico Gonzales, 23.
“Plot twist: sisterhood comes in unexpected ways and I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Tobie posted on Instagram with a photo from the trip.
“It’s going to be perfect — everything they wanted and with everyone they love,” a source said of the wedding.
Multiple sources said the undoubtedly photogenic affair is “likely” to be covered by Vogue in some way, but that editor Anna Wintour has had no role in helping Sánchez choose her gown. (While Wintour is on the guest list for the wedding, it’s not yet known whether she’ll be attending — though it could dovetail with her annual pilgrimage to Wimbledon, which begins in London on June 30.)
“The wedding gown is being made by a designer who has a longtime relationship with Lauren,” revealed the source in the know. Sánchez has often worn designs by the Italian duo Dolce and Gabbana.
Meanwhile, “Anna has played a big role in helping Huma find her gown” said an insider of bride-to-be Abedin. “She is so close to her.”
The insider confirmed Abedin and Soros’ wedding will be covered in Vogue.
It, too, is set to be a see-and-be-seen affair — with some guests being flown by helicopter from Manhattan to Soros’ $14.5 million family estate in Southampton, sources told us.
Some in his circle had wondered if reformed playboy Soros, 39, might remain a perennial bachelor. The scion, who chairs the board of his father George’s Open Society Foundations and sits on the investment committee for Soros Fund Management, told New York Magazine in April that, before meeting Abedin, “I hadn’t been in a relationship for a very long time — ten years or something like that — that had lasted for more than three months. And it’s, like, the first time I realized I had been mistaking lust for love.”
Their relationship certainly sounds unique.
“It’s not unusual for me to turn around at 4 a.m. and Alex is not there: He’s on a call, dealing with some crisis,” Abedin, 48, told the mag.
But for her, apparently, that’s a positive: “There’s a certain kind of stability and comfort.”
The longtime Hillary Clinton aide also noted, “I had never imagined I would meet someone whose life so seamlessly blended with mine.”
Indeed, the couple met at a 2023 birthday party that their mutual friend James Rothschild, of the banking family, threw for his wife Nicky Hilton.
Hilton and Rothschild will surely be invited to the wedding, along with Hillary and Bill Clinton, Chelsea Cliton and husband Marc Mezvinsky, and Wintour — all of whom had joined Abedin and her ex-husband, disgraced politician Anthony Weiner, at the bar mitzvah of their son Jordan last weekend, insiders said.
Weiner, for his part, said he wouldn’t be attending. But he had a message for his ex: “I’m thrilled for them.”
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