The wedding is rumoured to be costing a staggering $16 million (£12m), with $1 million (£744,880) spent on flowers and decor alone. Photo: Yara Nardi/ Reuters/Kevin Mazur/MG24/The Met Museum/Vogue

The 61-year-old billionaire’s wedding to the American journalist Lauren Sánchez, 55, is taking place in the city this week after a two-year-long engagement, although precise details are being kept top secret.

The couple and their crew of celebrity friends — such as Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ivanka Trump and Kim Kardashian, Orlando Bloom, Katy Perry and Mick Jagger, to name a few — are set to flood Venice’s canals with superyachts.

The wedding is rumoured to be costing a staggering $16 million (£12m), with $1 million (£744,880) spent on flowers and decor alone. Rosa Salva, Venice’s oldest pastry maker, is slated to provide desserts for the festivities.

Festivities kicked off last weekend onboard Bezos’ $500 million (£372m) superyacht Koru with a foam party, according to the Daily Mail.

The couple, who first met when they were married to other people, are set to say “I do” on San Giorgio Maggiore island, just across from St Mark’s Square, on Friday. The entire island has been rented for the day and will be closed to the public.

Five luxury hotels along the Grand Canal, including the Belmond Hotel Cipriani, the St Regis Venice, the Gritti Palace, the Hotel Danieli and the Grand Aman Hotel, are almost booked out entirely on the last weekend of June to accommodate guests.

Already being described by some as “wedding of the century”, the event is being organised by Lanza and Baucina, the planners behind the 2014 wedding of the actor George Clooney to the British lawyer Amal Alamuddin in Venice.

To add, all of the city’s nine mooring points have also been booked for the week leading up to the main event, and approximately 30 of the city’s water taxis, out of 280, are also thought to be reserved.

But while the world’s elite descend on Venice, local residents are speaking out, claiming that their city is being sold off one exclusive party at a time.

Giulia Cacopardo is one of them. The 28-year-old, who has lived and worked in Venice for five years, sits on the committee of No Space for Bezos, the one-month-old grassroots group behind the mounting protests that have garnered international attention over the past week.

“Bezos isn’t just a groom. He’s a symbol,” Ms Cacopardo says. “He built his fortune on the exploitation of workers, and now he wants to turn our home into a prop for his celebration. What values does he even represent? It’s grotesque.”

For Cacopardo, the wedding is the latest example of a much deeper problem afflicting Venice. Sky-high rents driven by platforms like Airbnb, a collapsing job market, and a dwindling population (now down to only 48,500 residents), have all chipped away at daily life, even as mass tourism continues to thrive.

She says the wedding will only make things worse, adding: “The crowds will make it harder for locals to get to and from work and these people know nothing about Venice, apart from its beauty.”

Just last weekend, Giulia and her colleagues spearheaded a demonstration attended by hundreds on the Rialto Bridge, draping a giant banner reading No Space for Bezos from the historic landmark. The week before, a sign with Bezos crossed out hung off the San Giorgio Maggiore bell tower. The group is now preparing for another major protest on Saturday.

“Life here is hard. However, our mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, is clearly more interested in making billionaires happy than listening to the people who actually live here,” she continues.

When news of the wedding broke in March, Mr Brugnaro released a statement reassuring the public that hosting 200 wedding guests was nothing unusual for a city like Venice and that the three-day celebration would cause no disruption to residents, denying claims of booking out gondolas and water taxis.

But details and timeline remain murky. The city’s tourism councillor, Simone Venturini, told The i Paper he had no idea when the event would actually take place. All that has been publicly confirmed is that it is happening some time this week.

Regardless, the antipathy towards the event remains the same.

“It’s not just a party. It’s the final insult,” says Federica Gozzo, a high school teacher who has lived in the city since her university days.

Ms Gozzo has been a fixture at the protests, attending them all so far, adding: “This is the moment Venice stops being a city and becomes a stage. A catwalk. Prostituted. A shadow of its former self.”

She says the wedding, and more precisely, who is throwing it, will “threaten the fragility” of the city and contends that the bride and groom should not be renting the place out.

Other locations, including Scuola Grande della Misericordia, an exhibition and trade centre usually open to the public, and Chiostro della Madonna dell’Orto church, are also believed to be on the list of Bezos’ wedding venues.

“Venice is not an object for consumption,” Ms Gozzo reiterates. “If you look at the current state of it and its progression into an artificial city for tourists, you can see this is the final erasure.”

Despite the backlash, city officials have expressed their interest in the wedding.

“Tourism is Venice’s bread and butter,” says Mr Venturini. “I can’t estimate how much money this event will bring to the city, but I know it won’t be small. It’s a pleasure for us to host Jeff Bezos and his friends.

“We’ve had much bigger events than this in the past, such as the annual film festival. 200 guests is not a lot.”

Back at the lagoon, Cacopardo says the protest plans are underway.

“Venice is disappearing. But not without a fight.”