Jeff Bezos is getting married — and he and his bride-to-be, Lauren Sánchez, have been making headlines for all of the wrong reasons. Bezos — Amazon founder, owner of the Washington Post, and billionaire — and Sánchez — American television anchor and reporter — are set to tie the knot in a very, very elaborate destination wedding in Venice. Think multiple days, many millions of dollars, hundreds of guests. As Sánchez’s brother Paul told TMZ in March, “I think it’s gonna be like a Princess Di thing.”

In fact, the wedding will reportedly be so extravagant, reactionary protests have been staged across the Italian city, known as the “No Space for Bezos” protests. Locals fear that the event will cause mass upheaval and disruption in a city already struggling with overtourism. Lanza & Baucina Limited, the firm responsible for organising the wedding, released a statement: “From the outset, instructions from our client and our own guiding principles were abundantly clear: the minimising 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.”

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Whatever you may think of the Bezos-Sánchez wedding, the couple are quickly becoming known for their seemingly ostentatious extravagance. While you probably know plenty about Bezos — words like Amazon, Blue Origin, Washington Post, billionaire probably come to mind — but who is Lauren Sánchez?

Who is Lauren Sánchez?

Sánchez was born on December 19, 1969 in New Mexico. In high school, Sánchez was a cheerleader and also a member of the student assembly.

She went on to study acting at the University of New Mexica, before applying to become an air stewardess. “Back then, they weighed you, and I weighed 121 pounds. They said, ‘You need to be 115,” she later told the Wall Street Journal. Instead, she embarked on another degree, this time at El Camino College in California.

It was here that she discovered she had dyslexia thanks to one of her teachers. “It changed my life,” she said. “I went from barely a 2.0 student to the dean’s list and got a scholarship to USC.”

Sánchez began her career as an anchor and reporter

Sánchez left USC in 1994 to pursue a career as a journalist. She landed a job at KTVK in Phoenix, Arizona and later worked at Extra and Fox. She came close to landing a hosting spot on The View, but lost the spot to Lisa Ling. “She was disappointed,” producer Michelle Pulfrey said to The Cut, “but she was always like, Next move. She was just an energiser bunny of a human. She was always crossing something off the list that she felt challenged by.”