A short walk from Venice’s main piazza, on the murky edge of the Grand Canal, stands one of the city’s most luxurious hotels: the Aman Venice.
With its Baroque frescos from celebrated painter Giambattista Tiepolo, restaurant offering delicious bowls of lobster-stuffed casoncelli, and a private jetty entrance to shield guests from prying eyes, it’s little wonder that the 16th-century palazzo has become something of a haven for the city’s super-rich.
So what better accommodation for many of the wedding guests of the world’s fourth-wealthiest man, Jeff Bezos, and his bride-to-be, former TV journalist Lauren Sanchez?
Eleven years after Hollywood star George Clooney married human rights lawyer Amal at the five-star hotel, the stars are aligning once again at the Aman for the wedding of the year.
Around 200 A-list guests are expected to arrive in Italy for Bezos’s nuptials this week – including members of the Kardashian family, TV mogul Oprah Winfrey, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and ‘First Daughter’ Ivanka Trump.
And a lucky 48 of them will be staying in the 24 rooms at the Aman, which former Amazon CEO Bezos has booked out for three nights from Wednesday, and where suites cost as much as £10,000 a night.
‘It’s the only place in the city luxurious enough for some of the guests this week. Anything they want, they’ll be able to get,’ a source tells me.
‘With most weddings, the Aman can only be hired out for one or two nights. But the more money you have, the more nights and access you can get.’
Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos (pictured in March 2025) are getting married this week in Italy
The Amazon founder has booked out the five-star Aman Venice hotel (pictured) for three nights to accommodate some of the wedding guests
The Aman Venice’s opulent suites complete with beautiful furnishings can cost as much as £10,000 per night
Indeed, while the wedding itself will take place on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, it is understood that Bezos and Sanchez will also host various reception parties and events for their guests at the Aman.
This is set to include an evening ‘concert’ by Grammy Award-winning singer Lady Gaga, who will perform for guests on the hotel’s grand piano said to have been played by 19th-century composer Frederic Chopin.
Guests can also enjoy in-house pastry chefs, wine connoisseurs and join their own private chefs on ‘market strolls’ to pick their produce.
Should they choose to join the ‘masses’ at one of the hotel’s three dining rooms, they can enjoy bowls of pasta from £34, cocktails from £24, and even a bottle of Bezos’s favourite wine, Dugat-Py Grand Cru, which he famously once bought for £3,000 in Cannes.
It also boasts a library with views across the canal, a roof terrace and one of the only private gardens in the city.
And, for any guests looking to unwind, there is a spa offering ‘thermal anti-ageing’ treatments as well as the hotel’s own skincare range.
Not that relaxation is what guests at the Aman often come looking for.
‘Live opera string quartets have played at weddings at the Aman,’ a source tells me.
The hotel has three dining rooms where guests can enjoy bowls of pasta from £34 and cocktails from £24
Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos attend the 2025 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Radhika Jones
George and Amal Clooney (pictured), who met in Italy, got married at the Aman Venice in September 2014
‘When hired completely out, 200 guests can fit across the venue for events and gatherings. One of the rooms has been transformed into a nightclub before.’
Based in the 450-year-old Palazzo Papadopoli, the hotel building has been the home of the aristocratic Papadopoli family for 200 years.
Though the family has offered part of the building to the Aman hotel group, they still live on the top floor of the palazzo in the penthouse suite.
While they are usually there for most of the year, this week they have vacated their home to go on a family holiday.
It means the penthouse residence will be available to the newlyweds – or whichever guest they might choose.
Since it opened in 2013, the hotel has been dubbed the best in Italy. So it was little surprise that George and Amal Clooney, who met in Italy that year and have a house in Lake Como, decided to say ‘I do’ there.
Around 100 of the couple’s nearest and dearest arrived for the wedding weekend in September 2014 and the three-day celebration was jam-packed with cocktails, dinner and dancing.
Guests including Vogue editor Dame Anna Wintour, Oscar-winner Matt Damon, and supermodel Cindy Crawford arrived at the Aman for the ceremony, which was officiated by the former mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni.
Lauren and Jeff (pictured in April 2025) are expecting around 200 guests, many of them high profile
Lauren Sanchez’s star-studded bachelorette party took place in Paris in May. Lauren is pictured with October Gonzalez
This was followed by a five-course meal and the cutting of the four-tiered art deco cake. The party lasted well into the next morning with more than 250 bottles of Champagne and 100 cases of Clooney’s own Casamigos brand tequila to fuel the revelry.
Bezos, 61, and Sanchez, 55, may at least be fuelled by a more local business: the Rosa Salva dessert shop in the heart of Venice.
Delicacies including lemon-flavoured bussola biscuits and cornmeal Zaletti cookies will be given out in gift bags from the city’s oldest bakery, which was established in 1879.
Quite what else the couple have planned has remained a little more of a mystery – even if the drama surrounding their nuptials has not.
Kim Kardashian was present at the bachelorette in Paris and is expected to attend the Italian wedding this week
Kris Jenner, Kim Kardashian and former Desperate Housewives actress Eva Longoria all attended Sanchez’s ‘bachelorette’ trip to Paris in May and are set to attend the nuptials.
However it is not confirmed whether singer Katy Perry – one of Sanchez’s close friends who joined her on her ‘Blue Origin’ trip into space in April – and her husband Orlando Bloom will be there amid rumoured tensions between the couple.
The wedding, which is thought to cost up to £10million, has upset locals and there have been several demonstrations with protesters holding signs that read ‘No Space for Bezos’.
Whether such protests will ever register with guests within the lavish walls of the Aman is anyone’s guess.
