On Tuesday night, a resplendent Lauren Sanchez, 55, was in Cannes to accept the Women Empowerment Award from the Global Gift Foundation – a charity that focuses on helping vulnerable and poverty-stricken women and children around the world.
Given the honour by her actress friend and co-chair of the organisation, Eva Longoria, Sanchez was praised for her ‘remarkable commitment to uplifting others, breaking barriers and championing change’.
She looked fantastically uplifted herself in her Dolce & Gabbana corseted dress, teamed with a striking diamond necklace.
The glittering event marked a week-long stint in France for the American journalist who made a name for herself as a TV news anchor, prior to making an even bigger name for herself as the girlfriend of one of the world’s richest men.
Last week, while taking a break from uplifting the less fortunate, Sanchez threw a three-day hen do (or ‘bachelorette party’ as the Americans call it) that featured a host of famous faces, an endless parade of dresses and handbags – and a hefty bill at the end.
But when you’re about to marry a multi-billionaire it stands to reason that your pre-wedding celebrations are never going to be a run-of-the-mill affair.
No town-centre pub crawl with L-plates pinned to her dress for Lauren, fiancee of Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos – currently listed as the second richest man in the world with a fortune of £165billion. (Super breeder, fellow tech bro and space nerd Elon Musk hogs the top spot with £312billion.)
Instead, Lauren headed to Paris for a three-day celebration with 12 of her closest girlfriends. No expense was spared for the bash, rumoured to have cost £500,000 – not that such a sum leaves much of a dent when your intended earns £2.6million per minute.
The posse, according to Sanchez’s Instagram, were the women who’ve ‘lifted me up, illuminated my path in dark times and shaped my heart along the way’. It all sounds rather lovely but begs the question of why the party in the City of Lights looked so, well, gloomy.
Hen weekends are meant to be messy affairs. One last, rowdy hurrah with the women who know your innermost fears and secrets and are determined to send you off in style to your new life.
Not many hens are clad head to toe in designer gear and have a world-renowned fashion photographer in tow as well as a fleet of beefy bodyguards.
A good hen do, no matter what age or how many times married the bride, should never be about prioritising Instagram photo ops, as Lauren’s appeared to be.
Despite Sanchez being Miami-based, with the majority of her girlfriends living in America, the French capital was a convenient choice. Sanchez’s fiance has been in Cannes in his role as head of Amazon MGM Studios.
Actress Eva Longoria was also in Cannes for the film festival, while fellow hens Kim Kardashian and her ‘momager’ Kris Jenner had been in Paris to testify at the trial of the alleged jewel thief gang accused of robbing Kim at gunpoint in the city nine years earlier.
Throw into the mix pop star Katy Perry, on a break from her world tour, and you have a celebrity guest list with a combined Instagram following of 622 million (roughly double the population of the US). Not bad when you want the world to know how happy and in love you are.
Longoria, best known for the TV show Desperate Housewives, has known Sanchez for more than 20 years. But the Kardashian/Jenner friendship seems to be a more recent affair. In 2023, Sanchez wished Kim a happy birthday on Instagram, gushing ‘your kind heart shines equally as bright as your beauty’. Last year Kim returned the favour by supporting Sanchez’s book launch and joining her and Bezos in Greece.
Also in attendance were a clutch of other high-achieving women including charity worker Elsa Marie Collins, TV host Charissa Thompson, Indian businesswoman Natasha Poonawalla, Lauren’s sister Elena, entrepreneur Veronica Smiley Grazer and good friend Bego Amaya.
Demonstrating what a forward-thinking, modern woman she is, Sanchez also invited October Gonzalez, wife of former American football player Tony Gonzalez, Sanchez’s former partner and father of her eldest son Nikko, 24.
Sanchez has remained close to her ex and struck up a friendship with October when she began dating Tony 19 years ago.
There was no invite for Bezos’s ex-wife MacKenzie Scott, though. That would be taking forward-thinking a little too far.
Also present was attorney Lydia Kives, wife of Michael Kives – a man dubbed ‘the super connector’ since he’s thought to be the best connected man in Hollywood. A former talent agent with the powerful CAA agency, he’s now a successful venture capitalist with an address book that includes the Clintons, the Kardashians, Leonardo DiCaprio, Gwyneth Paltrow and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
The Kives are also besties with Katy Perry and her fiance, British actor Orlando Bloom, and may well have connected them to Lauren. It was pop star Katy who went into space with Lauren last month on their much-mocked 11-minute, all-female flight, where the crew took one small step for man, one giant leap for rich women in designer bodycon spacesuits. Designer outfits aplenty were on display in Paris, too, when the bachelorette celebrations got underway last Thursday.
Before heading out for dinner at the famous Lafayette’s restaurant, the gang (minus Eva Longoria) posed for a rooftop picture at the Cheval Blanc Hotel, a Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy-owned establishment where suites cost around £22,000 per night (one second’s work to Jeff).
The photo, taken by celebrated fashion photographer Nicolas Gerardin, saw Lauren wearing the first in a series of white outfits (she’s the bride, in case you didn’t clock that).
And what a curious bunch they looked. Sanchez carried a fluffy white coat to wear over her custom Galia Lahav white mini dress. Katy Perry chose a blush-coloured corseted dress, while Kim Kardashian was in what looked like ribbed tights (perhaps she wanted something with a bit of ‘give’ for the fried chicken later?) As for Kris Jenner, for reasons best known to herself, she went dressed as a Victorian school mistress.
The Lafayette’s menu included smoked salmon, fried chicken, caesar salad and a main course of mushroom rigatoni. Dessert was either creme caramel or rum baba. Quite the calorific selection for a group of women famed for their tiny waists!
The Kardashians have long been rumoured to rely on Ozempic to stay trim (something Kim has denied) and Katy Perry looks to have dropped a couple of dress sizes lately, too. But since nobody was pictured leaving with a doggy bag, perhaps they managed to scoff the lot.
The next day the ladies headed out for a spot of shopping. Lauren, who is particularly proud of her washboard stomach, wore an Oscar de la Renta crop top and mini skirt to hit the stores, before heading to lunch at L’Avenue.
Then it was back to the hotel for a quick change and another photo op, courtesy of Gerardin, who appeared to have been hired for the whole weekend. This time the well-preserved, wrinkle-free women posed on a staircase for the black-and-white portrait that Lauren released via Instagram.
Her third outfit of the trip was a white satin Murmur corset top with matching laced-up skirt, while she carried a too-small-to-be-practical £4,500 crystal encrusted Judith Leiber handbag in the shape of the Eiffel Tower.
The gang then took what looked like a joyless, freezing cold party boat cruise along the Seine, stopping to pose for pictures as they passed the actual Eiffel Tower.
How Katy Perry must have wished she hadn’t dressed in what appeared to be a swimming costume trimmed with a bit of fishing net. Kris Jenner was probably happier she stuck with the buttoned-up Victorian lady vibe. The party finished at Le Grand Cafe.
On Saturday, Lauren flew down to Cannes to be reunited with her beau. After roughing it on that grim Seine barge, she must have been relieved to board a vessel more in keeping with the style she’s become accustomed to: her husband’s £373 million yacht, Koru.
The lovebirds appeared to have missed each other terribly during those 72 hours apart as they were pictured having a steamy reunion on deck with Lauren, clad in a teeny-weeny bikini, being playfully stroked and spanked by her husband-to-be. Was she in trouble for spending too much money?
It was aboard that very yacht two years ago that Bezos, 61, proposed to Sanchez after five years of dating, presenting her with a 20 carat cushion-cut diamond ring said to be worth in the region of £2 million. No wonder the lucky lady said: ‘When I opened the box, I think I blacked out a bit.’
Of her super-rich future husband, Lauren says: ‘He inspires me every day. He makes me a better person every day. He’s the most loving human I know.’
As for Bezos, what seems to impress him most about his future wife is that she remembers birthdays. ‘Lauren is the most generous, most big-hearted person you could ever meet. She never misses a birthday. The network of people she gives birthday presents to is gigantic.’ I’ll bet. Billionaires don’t tend to be short of friends.
Lauren’s extravagant Parisian celebrations and Bezos’s phenomenal wealth provide some clues as to what we can expect at the couple’s nuptials next month in Venice. Just like the hen do, the wedding is expected to be a three-day affair.
It’s thought that the ceremony could be held at either The Gritti Palace or the Aman Venice hotel, and there are rumours that Elton John and Lady Gaga will perform at the reception.
Italian media report that wedding planners have booked out Venice’s top-five hotels for guests, reserved most of the city’s water taxi fleet and a dock for the Koru.
The Parisian hens are likely to be at the wedding. Other rumoured guests include Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour (who is said to have helped Sanchez with her Oscar de la Renta wedding dress) as well as Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DiCaprio and possibly President Trump and First Lady Melania. (Bezos and Sanchez were front and centre at Trump’s inauguration earlier in the year.)
The couple’s blended family of seven children will also be in attendance (Bezos has four with his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott, while Sanchez has her son Nikko, plus a son and daughter with her ex-husband Patrick Whitesell).
With five weeks to go, let the countdown to the flashiest wedding the world has ever seen begin.
No expense spared? Absolutely. Celebrity-packed? Guaranteed. Tasteful? Don’t hold your breath.