Tunny Parrish did the math.

Jeff Bezos' wedding in Venice with Lauren Sánchez and surrounding activities last week is estimated to have cost upward of $46.8 million, according to the region's governor.

For that money, the Amazon founder could pay for nearly every Seattle Public School students' breakfast and lunch for a school year, the Seattle Universal Math Museum communications staffer noted.

Breakfast costs $2.25 and lunch $3.25 for elementary schoolers, while breakfast is $2.50 and lunch $3.50 for middle and high schoolers. That's a total of just over $51 million for the school system's nearly 49,000 students during a 180-day school year.

The Seattle Times asked readers last week what they would do with the hefty chunk of change — were it to show up on their doorstep like an Amazon package.

Over 170 readers responded to The Times' survey.

Many listed outstanding expenses and charities they’d spend it on, but they largely found it difficult to know just how to spend the riches, even over the rest of their lifetime.

One reader, Karen Schmidt, joked she’d buy millions of cappuccinos in Venice. If a cappuccino costs 5 euro, the money would buy at least 8 million cups. Take 10 minutes to sip each one, and Schmidt would be looking at a 152-year stint in her favorite Venetian cafe — not counting bathroom breaks.

Details of the wedding’s extravagance are few. But according to media reports, the couple booked out five of Venice’s most luxurious hotels for the three-day blowout, hosted celebrities including Oprah Winfrey and Ivanka Trump, exchanged rings on a small island accompanied by singer Matteo Bocelli, and had a party at the Arsenale, a former shipyard.

“It’s utterly egregious that one person should be able to amass such wealth and use it in these ways,” said Stephanie Clare, an English professor at the University of Washington.

Clare had her first child, now 9 years old, with in vitro fertilization, which cost $100,000, then took a nine-month paid parental leave from work.

She said it cost her $200,000 just for years of day care, biweekly occupational therapy and tutoring for her child, who has special needs.

Were the pile of cash to land in her hand, Clare said she would use it to raise a second child, buy a house and put aside money for her kids’ education.

To buy a home could cost at least $1 million in Seattle, and she estimates she would need to spend another $200,000 for her two kids to attend the UW for four years.

All those costs total $1.5 million. It would be “life changing” to receive just that amount, she said.

If Seattleite Mike Rosen got the cash, the retired cabinetmaker said he would do the exact same as Bezos. Spend it.

“It’s his money,” Rosen said. “If you have more money than God, if you spend it, you’re putting it to real use.”

That money trickles down to service workers, interior designers, yacht architects and businesses instead of doing no good for anyone besides Bezos if the money was to be shored up in his investments, Rosen said.

On the other hand, even a morsel of Bezos’ matrimonious bounty would be enough to give anyone a grand wedding, Diane Frishman said. She would use just $50,000 to pay for a wedding and honeymoon and give the rest to environmental and animal rights charities.

The average cost of a wedding in the U.S. is about $36,000 in 2025, according to wedding planning site Zola. A honeymoon costs about $5,300 on average, The Knot estimated. Spending a few thousand dollars in excess of that would be “extravagant, but at least it wouldn’t be shameful,” she said.

That sum could also provide housing, cementing long-term solutions for King County’s more than 16,000 homeless people in 2024, said retiree Susan Shields who lives in the Seattle region.

“I can’t do it myself, but an individual like Bezos could but won’t,” she said.

Bezos’ Day One Fund made a $2 billion commitment to fund existing nonprofits that help homeless families and build and operate tuition-free preschools in under-resourced communities.

Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence in Seattle received $2.5 million in a grant last year, for instance. Several other nonprofits in the Seattle area have also received grants from the fund.

Nevertheless, according to state data, it costs about $60,000 for a homeless household in an emergency shelter to exit to permanent housing. With Bezos’ $46.8 million wedding budget, that means he could pay to move nearly 800 homeless households into a stable living space.

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