VENICE, Italy (AP) — Oprah Winfrey arrived in Venice on Thursday, leading a star-studded guest list of celebrities descending on the lagoon city for the weekend wedding of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez.
Winfrey’s private jet landed at Venice’s Marco Polo airport.
The bride and groom pulled into the Aman Hotel dock on the Grand Canal on Wednesday, traveling via water taxi with security boats in tow. A few hours later they slipped out of the hotel, with Sánchez wearing a sleek black and white striped, one-shoulder gown.
The details of the nuptials have been a tightly kept secret, though the locations now appear to have firmed up as has the guest list.
Ivanka Trump, her husband Jared Kushner and their three children arrived Wednesday.
Other celebrities on the guest list, according to two people close to the wedding who spoke on condition of anonymity, because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly, include:
— Mick Jagger
— Katy Perry
— Leonardo DiCaprio
— Orlando Bloom
Italian media reported the arrivals or presence of:
— Microsoft founder Bill Gates
— Kim Kardashian
— Diane von Furstenberg and her husband Barry Diller
The wedding has divided Venice, with some activists protesting it as an exploitation of the city by the billionaire Bezos while ordinary residents suffer from overtourism, high housing costs and the constant threat of climate-induced flooding.
Protesters said that their plans to disrupt the arrivals of guests at one of the wedding venues forced organizers to move the event to the more secure Arsenale area beyond Venice’s congested center.
The city administration has strongly defended the nuptials as keeping with Venice’s tradition as an open city that for centuries has welcomed popes and emperors and ordinary visitors alike.
“We will always respect the right to speak out, but we reject every form of intolerance and prejudice,” Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said in Thursday’s edition of Italian newspaper Il Foglio Quotidiano. “No one in Venice can claim the right of deciding who can enter, who can love, who can celebrate.”
