The Bezos-Sanchez Wedding Wasn’t Romantic. It Was Gross.

Why, even as a pop culture obsessive, the billion-dollar wedding left me cold.

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I am nothing if not a popular culture obsessive.

I store vast amounts of trivia in my head about piffllingly inane historical moments.

© @laurensanchezbezos/Instagram/Reuters

I can quote entire tracts of Real Housewives dialogue and nail it to the door of the internet like Luther’s 95 Theses.

I can remember every single cast member in the original season of Big Brother and the moment that we, as a nation, collectively discovered ‘Nasty Nick’ had been - shock, horror! - handwriting notes trying to influence the voting system.

I can tell you which Mormon wife was accused of having a vagina that tasted like breakfast cereal (Demi) and which one falsely claimed to be related to Ben Affleck (Jenn). And talking of Ben Affleck, I can recall his Dunkin’ Donuts meme like a quantum physicist can recall Einstein’s theory of relativity, which is to say instantaneously and with appropriate reverence for its earth-shattering consequences.

I can draw you a complete Kardashian / Jenner family tree and treat you to a prolonged disquisition on why studying this single group of biologically interconnected people will actually teach you the meaning of modern America itself.

I can tell you which Love Island contestants have had children and which couples are still together. I can also tell you quite a bit about Love Island USA despite never having worked out how to watch it.

I love TikTok videos where bitchy queens savage every single celebrity outfit on a red carpet. I know the ins and outs of Sydney Sweeney’s love life; that Olivia Rodrigo brought out Robert Smith to perform on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury; and that Megan Fox has brachydactyly thumbs. In fact, I can exclusively reveal that I also have a brachydactyly thumb - a genetic condition which results in a shortening of the joints. It’s otherwise commonly known as ‘toe thumb’ or, somewhat sinisterly, ‘murderer’s thumb’ because of an old superstition propagated by palm readers and fortune tellers that a stubby thumb denoted a bad temper or violent nature. There’s no truth to it. But, then again, I guess I would say that. Still, I’m proud that in one respect, at least, I look exactly like Megan Fox. Oh, and I can also recall the American Love Is Blind contestant who went viral for claiming she too looked like Megan Fox (it was Chelsea, Season 6).

But this past week, something shocking has happened to me. I have discovered the one thing in popular culture in which I have no interest. Zilch. Nada. Nothing.

It is Jeff Bezos’s wedding to Lauren Sanchez.

Normally, I would be delightedly poring over every single detail of an overblown celebrity wedding. I would want to know about the design of the dress, the arrangement of the flowers, the undignified excess of the bachelorette party and whether or not the bride had booked Andrea Bocelli. But this time, I felt…numb. In truth, I felt sickened by it all.

Of course, there’s the obvious awfulness of throwing such an elaborate, mind-bendingly expensive and yet simultaneously tacky celebration in the midst of the world descending into its self-made abyss of chaos. It’s an awfulness heightened by the fact that Bezos himself is not insignificantly responsible for said chaos. The third richest man in the world (after Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg), former Amazon boss Bezos is regularly accused of being a bully, having questionable political views, failing to give enough of his vast $237 billion fortune to charity, as well as presiding over unethical workplace conditions, anti-competitive business practices and obsessing over profits to an almost psychotic extent.

So, yeah. Not great.

© Vogue

To throw a gargantuan party - a civilian coronation of supreme naffness - at a time when the rest of us fear we’re teetering on the brink of World War III, seems unnecessary at best. I’m not usually a proponent of ‘whatabouttism’ (or, if you’re a Kardashians fan, the scene where Kim loses her diamond earrings in the ocean only to be reminded by Kourtney that ‘children are dying’) but when Bezos is so inextricably linked to the desperate inequity stoking the world’s conflagrations, it’s difficult to look at him without being reminded of other people’s pain.

And then there’s Lauren Sanchez. Why do I find her so problematic? The couple started their affair when both married to other people and Bezos sent pictures of his ‘semi-erect manhood’ to Sanchez which he then had to prevent the National Enquirer from printing. I strive not to judge how others conduct their personal lives, so it’s not because of that. Relationships are complicated. Marriages end. Semi-erect manhood pics exist. It’s more that Sanchez seems so unbearably smug about being able to spend her new husband’s fortune on buying herself a new life, a new look, a new body, a new circle of famous friends and a new atmosphere (quite literally: Bezos sent her into space on the all-female Blue Origin space shuttle flight along with Katy Perry and Gayle King, thereby ushering in one small step for women, one giant leap for insufferable levels of She-E-O cringe). In using his money in this way, Sanchez stands before us as the physical embodiment of unfairness. It’s almost as if, in her custom-made Dolce & Gabanna dress with its 180 silk-covered buttons and her American Vogue cover and her billion-dollar wedding played out in Venice in front of the world’s media without a hint of self-awareness or humility, she is taunting us. She is the have. Everyone else is one giant mass of have nots.

The Blue Origin NS-31 crew © Blue Origin

Compare and contrast with, for instance, Taylor Swift. During her Eras Tour, Swift donated assiduously to food banks in whichever country she happened to be performing. She also gave substantial bonuses to her crew, including rumoured $100,000 tips to each truck driver, along with handwritten thank you notes. She is a noted, regular philanthropist - for a more comprehensive timelines of all the many organisations and issues she has donated to, you can read this Billboard article. Social media is regularly awash with pictures and videos of Swift visiting children in hospital. This is someone who, with a net worth of $1.6 billion, understands not only her privilege but her ability to do good and to donate to those who need it most.

Taylor Swift visiting a children’s hospital in Florida. Credit : Jo DiMaggio Children’s Hospital

It would have been nice, wouldn’t it, for the newly minted Mr and Mrs Bezos to donate to a food bank in Venice? Just the tiniest gesture - a drop in the endless ocean of their unfathomable wealth. To say to the world, ‘We know we’re outrageously lucky, please let us do something in return so that we can spread our joy to others.’ But no. There was none of that.

Still, there is one person in this dystopian vortex of conspicuous consumption who gives us a glimmer of redemptive hope, and that’s MacKenzie Scott. She’s Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife, whose marriage ended in the aftermath of his affair with Sanchez. Scott and Bezos first met in 1992, married a year later and then quit their jobs in 1994 to set up an online bookseller from their Seattle garage. That venture became Amazon.

MacKenzie Scott

Scott received a $35.6 billion divorce settlement. Over the last five years, she has quietly lent her support to over 2,000 organisations. Her donations amount to a staggering $19,250,000,000 according to a report from The Center for Effective Philanthropy and her website Yield Giving. The causes she chooses include those advocating for racial equality, LGBTQ+ rights, democracy, action against climate change and providing support to people affected by the COVID-19 pandemic to address systemic inequities.

Of course, she wasn’t pictured attending the Bezos-Sanchez nuptials. She’s far too classy for that.