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Though stationery is traditional, there are many other ways to invite people to something special. On an episode of My Super Sweet 16, the 2000s MTV reality show, one party-thrower memorably invited his guests with a voice recording that lived on an MP3 player—cutting-edge technology at the time—that the invitees then got to keep. In 2014 a football player sent everyone on his wedding invite list an iPad preprogrammed with information about the big day. This is more in line with the sort of thing I was expecting from Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez when it came time to send out invitations for their nuptials—Amazon Fire tablets, maybe, because why not sprinkle in a little synergy?
I couldn’t have been more wrong. This week, ahead of Bezos and Sánchez’s Venice wedding, ABC News obtained a portion of their wedding invitation. What does an invitation to a $55 million wedding look like? A lot like the greeting cards I used to design on my family’s PC as a kid, it turns out. The ostensible purpose of the part of the invitation that leaked was for Bezos and Sánchez to announce their no-gifts policy and that they would be donating on their guests’ behalf to causes like UNESCO Venice, an organization dedicated to the city’s lagoons, and Venice International University. But the first thing most people noticed about it was that it was covered in notebook-doodle illustrations of butterflies, stars, birds, and scenes of Venice.
To be fair, this is likely only a piece of the invitation. Katie Fischer Cohen, a graphic designer who specializes in wedding invitations, told me via email, “I’m thinking they may have sent this out digitally via email rather than print? The font choice seems very web-friendly (easy to read on a smartphone, etc).” For all we know, there could have been a paper component of the invitation too, or maybe Jeff did send out those tablets after all.
And it’s fairly clear it’s not a coincidence that this is the only portion of the invitation that the press got ahold of. Not everyone in Venice is happy that Bezos and Sánchez are taking over their fair city for a weekend. Some have speculated that strategically revealing that the couple is not only not asking for gifts but making donations for their guests was not so much a leak as a public-relations play. This seems plausible, but unfortunately, the publicity masterminds failed to take into account that it would also create an occasion for everyone to weigh in on Bezos and Sánchez’s design choices.
Did Sánchez design this herself, using a free program like Canva? Did she actually use clip art? For what it’s worth, I popped a few of the illustrations into a reverse image search and nothing came up, so I think it’s possible she commissioned original illustrations, which would mean that at least someone got paid. Though the prevailing sentiment is that the illos are a little tacky looking, Cohen was tactful in her assessment of them: “They went with a more whimsical style, rather than traditional—weaving in artwork pertaining to Venice and other elements that might have personal meaning to them. One fun activation idea at the wedding would be for them to make temporary tattoos for their guests using this artwork.” I’ll grant that it would be very funny if Oprah, Bill Gates, and the other masters of the universe reportedly attending this wedding were offered butterfly and gondola temporary tattoos at it.
Sánchez, who was presumably behind these invites, is a divisive figure, and this is hardly the first time people have bristled at her personal style or criticized her perceived lack of taste. She wore a corset to a White House state dinner, she orchestrated a girlboss convention in space, and now she has slapped some ugly butterflies on the invitations to her $55 million wedding, because of course she has. One might argue that she doesn’t deserve this much scrutiny for the victimless crime of choosing unsophisticated illustrations, for thinking a bird carrying a feather is cute rather than cannibalistic. But people are angry about billionaires and what they’re doing to the world, whether it’s spending millions on a lavish wedding while Amazon workers remain underpaid or driving climate change that will eventually sink Venice. There’s not a lot most of us can do about any of that. Those stupid little butterflies, though? You better believe we’re gonna tell you exactly how much we hate them.
