For richer...

With Venice centre stage, the Bezos wedding will be a pageant of excess.

- Stephen Armstrong

Jeff Bezos's first wedding, back in 1993, was at the Breakers hotel in Palm Beach. Jeff and his first wife, MacKenzie Tuttle, were gawky and adorable.

He was skinny, losing his hair, with glasses, a goofy grin and a honking laugh. She had a scruffy, lopsided pixie cut and slightly wonky teeth. The couple met at work a year or so earlier, when he interviewed her for a job as a research assistant. She was attracted to his laugh and asked him out for lunch. Three months later they were engaged. Three months after that, they were setting up an adult-size play area with huge water balloons for their wedding guests and ending the event with a late-night pool party. Amazon was just a twinkle in his eye - a twinkle that his bride believed in so much she drove from New York to Seattle while he worked on the business plan.

The venue is a triumph of gilded-era America's fascination with European style. Built in 1895, the resort's Renaissance Revival architecture includes the Venetian Ballroom; the Gold Room, based on Venice's Galleria Academia; and the Circle Ballroom with a huge Venetian crystal chandelier.

Towards the end of the month, Bezos is getting married again. This time, he is the third richest man in the world, a muscular, toned, superyacht-owning billionaire who goes to space in a cowboy hat. So why go for oval murals depicting Venetian landscapes when you can have actual Venice? Why have a room based on the Galleria Academia, when you can book the former church Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Misericordia in the heart of the city as well as the island of San Giorgio, just opposite St Mark's Square?