The guest list for the upcoming extravagant destination wedding for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and former journalist Lauren Sánchez might include people from the couple’s past.
Sánchez’s ex-boyfriend, Tony Gonzalez, and his wife, October “Tobie” Gonzalez, are set to attend the wedding in Venice this week, according to TMZ.
Tony and his wife are currently in Europe, as October posted a montage of their time in Italy on Instagram. “Road trippin through Rome and Tuscany,” she captioned the post.
Sánchez and Tony dated in the early 2000s and share a 24-year-old son named Nikko.
Since the couple’s breakup in 2002, Tony went on to marry October in July 2007, while the former journalist went on to marry talent agent Patrick Whitesell, to whom she was married from 2005 to 2019. They share son Evan, 19, and daughter Ella, 17.
Sánchez has grown close to October, who was one of the attendees at her star-studded bachelorette party in Paris last month. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal in 2023, Sánchez said she is “best friends” with both October and Tony.
“It wasn’t always that way. There was friction [at the beginning],” she added.
Although the guest list for Bezos and Sánchez’s wedding has not been made public, it is rumored to be filled with Hollywood A-listers. The couple kicked festivities off with a foam party over the weekend.
In paparazzi photos obtained by the Daily Mail, the pair were seen Sunday covered in soap during a foam party with their friends on Bezos’s $500 million yacht, Koru, on the island of Cres in Croatia. The Mail noted that there was a “Happy Birthday” sign on the boat, suggesting that the party may have been in celebration of Sánchez’s son Evan, who recently turned 19.
Bezos and Sánchez, who got engaged in 2023, will begin their three-day wedding in Venice later this week — an exact date has not been confirmed; however, multiple outlets report it will take place from Thursday to Saturday. Ahead of their arrival, there have been many protests against the couple in the floating city.
However, Bezos and Sánchez’s wedding planners from Lanza & Baucina Limited addressed the backlash and defended the couple. The business claimed the event wouldn’t disrupt the lives of Venice locals.
“As event organizers who have been working in Venice for over 24 years, we feel obliged to set the record straight given the misinformation, untruths and misunderstandings circulating about the Bezos wedding,” Lanza & Baucina Limited said in a statement.
“From the outset, instructions from our client and our own guiding principles were abundantly clear: the minimizing of any disruption to the city, the respect for its residents and institutions and the overwhelming employment of locals in the crafting of the events.”
