The Parties, Protests, Frocks And Rocks

In the wake of the official, June 27 Sanchez/Bezos ultra-glitzy black-tie affair on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore — technically, the exchange-of-rings ceremony and its subsequent reception-and-dinner in the Cini Foundation vineyard — the bride, groom and their 200-plus guests have seemed comfortably delighted at being in Venice to run the weekend’s highly choreographed gauntlet of bacchanals — with a just a whiff of art tourism and creative bopping-around-town on the side.

As a sort of side game to the fine boat parades and the good levels of frockery, as the 72-hour party marathon rolled on, the general estimates of its cost ballooned. The celebrations were said to have been “downsized” and the estimates ranged in the $10-million-to-$20 million range as the paparazzi snapped Orlando Bloom, Queen Raina of Jordan, Tom Brady, Usher, Brian Grazer and a slew of other high-wattage attendees embarking on their private airport launches to their hotels on June 25.

Two big parties and a couple of fragmented afterparties into the weekend — after the ring exchange on Friday and its dinner in the Cini Foundation vineyard on San Giorgio Maggiore Friday night, the estimates were in the $25 million range. By Saturday, the day of the Lady Gaga/Elton John “post-wedding” rager at the Arsenale — and perhaps after a closer reconsideration of the truly huge rocks Bezos bestowed on his new wife, of 30 and 35 carats, respectively — it was posited that the three-plus day extravaganza will have cost some $50 million. Whoops! In fact, the rise in estimates was predictable. The ducats required in Venice to accomplish this or that ordinary feat (of cookery, scullery, lodging, transport, security, et al.) can rise like La Serenissima’s infamous aqua alta.

And what celebration of the great and the good would be worth its salt without a demonstration, or, in this case, several of them? Pictured below, the planned Saturday, June 28, grab-bag protest against the three-day affair and against pretty much every other occurrence on earth, including Israel’s Gaza war, rolls through central Venice in the afternoon.

Certainly for the running packs of coursing-dog paparazzi, the business of the weekend lay in the effervescent social mix. Odd bro-couple Orlando Bloom and Tom Brady, both batching it to the nuptials, both tossed together in the Gritti Palace — and whether either of them is truly single being wholly beside the point — enjoyed a bit of boulevardier-ing about as each other’s wingman. The feverish paparazzo/photo editor question was rather, a comedic Shakespearean one: Can we possibly trap either of these blades en route to or from an actual score?

A quixotic quest, at best, with venue security at these ultra-high levels. But still. For those hoping that Bloom or Brady did, contrary to appearances, get lucky, there is this consolation: Difficult as it may be for ordinary mortals to imagine, if in Venice you have the ducats — and this wedding party did have those — it’s entirely possible to turn the Gritti Palace or the Hotel Cipriani into a co-ed university dorm. And we know what happens in those abodes.

At least one squad of hyper-caffeinated paparazzi — sorely taxed over the last days, what with the residents of the five Bezos-rented hotels to stake out — succeeded in stumbling upon Bill Gates and his new steady, Paula Hurd, as they dutifully threaded through the tourist bustle and took in the Gallerie Accademia’s exhibitions, prime among them the incisive “Corpi Moderni” or “Modern Bodies” exhibition, featuring the seminal works depicting the human body by da Vinci, Michelangelo, Dürer, Bellini et al., half a millennium ago. Mr. Gates, we should recall, was the audacious buyer of the da Vinci “Leicester” Codex for $30 million in 1994, making it the most expensive book in the world at the time. Serious kudos to the Gates-Hurds for that joust!

Parenthetically, as clothes horses, the Gates-Hurds also score high. Single strand of pearls looks good anywhere, anytime. On him, loving those summery black socks pulled up just right to mid-calf, devil-may-care Harvard-dropout-style. The look is: These are people you’d actually want to have dinner with. They could tell you a few things you probably don’t know.

Five hundred years on from that Codex, who knew that da Vinci’s, Michelangelo’s and Dürer’s anatomical work would augment our view of the auspicious Sanchez/Bezos nuptial collection of modern bodies at this juncture in Venice? Kismet!

Except! Venice, right? Over the weekend, boat-boarding was a trial for some of those daringly attired bodies, because Venice’s luxe mahogany launches, the motoscafi, are designed to sit sleek and low to the water, first, because that’s the silhouette that Tagliapietra, Cucchini, Serenella and the other builders have been honing in mahogany for the better part of a century in Venice. Venetians are well aware that the nautically naive, and especially those without sea legs, may have trouble making the leap from land to sea.

Pictured above en route to Friday night’s ring ceremony on San Giorgio Maggiore, the no-longer-an-official-billionaire Kylie Jenner receives courtly assistance from at least three concerned Venetian boatmen and a Gritti Palace security supervisor. Does the Gritti Palace security supervisor look like he cares if she and/or her people misrepresented her stack of poker chips by 100-to-300 million back in the day? Not a bit of it; this is Venice, everything else is out in that other, sadder, workaday world.

The archipelago’s somewhat hostile insularity, pun intended, is as grand and philosophically present in the public mindset as it is geologically. Which is, not coincidentally, why Venice has for literally hundreds of years drawn so many British and American expats — from George Gordon to Thomas Mann to Peggy Guggenheim and on out to Diane von Furstenberg. It’s welcoming, because it’s never not itself. No amount of over-tourism, or depopulation, or high water — all of which plague this stupendous town — can change that.

Pictured below on Friday, June 27, departing the Gritti Palace en route to the ring ceremony, Oprah Winfrey meets the very same boarding difficulty, while Gayle King mentally rehearses that big first step down into the bobbing motoscafo.

Like Jenner, a great proportion of the 200-plus assembled were in fact focused on getting their modern bodies into clothes for the successive functions — it was hellish work, but as an ad-hoc “civilian” mass fashion walk, the work showed well. With very few exceptions and very few kinda-cool/trashy overstatements, the frockery was polished, as below, on the Gritti Palace quay, in the windswept beige/grey gown worn by Italian model Vittoria Ceretti, and in the outrageously detailed red number worn by Indian philanthropist Natasha Poonawalla. That outstanding Humphrey-Bogart double-breasted white dinner jacket — arguably the only and the perfect choice in Venice’s 90-degree June swelter — is of course being carried by British Vogue’s former editor and Conde Nast’s man-about-the-planet Edward Eninful. Cool as a cucumber, this man.

The bride herself brought a reported 27 outfits for the approximately 72-hour blitz. From leaving the Koru in Croatia on Thursday to departure from Venice late on Sunday, she showed fine “boat dresses,” out of which she would change at her venues. Her blaze-white Dolce and Gabbana mermaid-cut ring-ceremony gown was a hit. Pictured below, the acclaimed designer Domenico Dolce after lunch on the Gritti Palace terrace.

Leaving the complex architecture of the heavier “function” outfits aside, the people stuffed the luggage, carrying “arrival wear,” “lounge-wear,” “day-wear,” and “tour-wear.” Off-duty, our favorite maybe-bachelor Orlando Bloom stuck to training shoes and shorts. Leo DiCaprio, the American actor who sidelines as Vittoria Ceretti’s other half, sported his trademark anti-paparazzi black baseball cap worn traditionally low. This one, a Dodgers number. Below, DiCaprio leaves for the ring ceremony in a regulation tux. He can actually have stumbled, or he may just be doing a feint to frustrate the paparazzi.

Saturday’s do, the finale weekend blow-out at the Arsenale, the party to end all parties, saw Lady Gaga and Elton John, whose camps previously played coy that they were in town to sing, finally sing. Bottom line: It was a breezily eclectic crowd. By that is meant, it wasn’t what the grand dames of the South would call a “telephone book” wedding, rather, it’s a healthy sign that the list really was curated by Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos. In the paparazzi’s work, you get to see with whom they really do business, whom they love and whom they like. Below, Lydia Kives in a backless salmon gown, recreates a contemplative Belle Epoque moment on the Gritti Palace balcony.

In execution, the weekend was roisterous and long, and for such a tight environment as that of Venice, it was remarkably far-flung. Seemingly thorny on the surface, the movement of people and materiel to those far-flung corners was actually quite smooth. At bottom, the Sanchez/Bezos weekend was a neighborhood affair — that of a global neighborhood, certainly, but a neighborhood nonetheless. That’s why, despite obvious and considerable obstruction, the thing worked.