For Google Bachelor, a Wedding Fit for a Billionaire

Dec. 7, 2007 — -- What's a bachelor worth nearly $20 billion to do when he decides to tie the knot?

Rent out a private island, get a fellow billionaire to be best man, fly in a slew of A-listers and revel in the fact that while the whole production will cost millions of dollars, you'll still have enough money to buy just about anything, including some small nations.

Google co-founder Larry Page is expected to marry his fiancée this weekend at a private ceremony on Necker Island, a Caribbean enclave owned by Richard Branson, according to the Times of London.

"Booking a private island is becoming more of the trend these days with billionaires," said Preston Bailey, a New York-based event planner whose clients include fellow billionaires Donald Trump and Oprah Winfrey. "It gives them much more security and privacy that is needed in these types of grand affairs."

Branson, the British owner of Virgin Group, will serve as Page's best man, according to Reuters. Which means that Page probably isn't paying him anything to use Necker Island for his nuptials -- but if he were, it would cost a lot more than a ceremony at the local church.

"If you wanted to book an entire island you'd probably pay between $1 and $2 million for a week," celebrity wedding planner Sasha Souza said. "You can book a castle or a chateau in France for a week for about $30,000. So this is significantly more."

Page, 34, co-founded the iconic search company with Stanford University classmate Sergey Brin in 1998. And no, he did not Google "trophy wife" to find his soon-to-be bride.

Lucy Southworth, 27, is currently studying biomedical informatics at Stanford and holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Oxford, according to the New York Post, which also reports that the svelte blonde did medical work in South Africa and "wants to better the world."

The power couple's plans for world domination will be put on hold when their 600 guests descend on Necker Island. According to the Times of London, Page and Southworth's guest list includes U2 frontman Bono and several business bigwigs.

Though the Times reported that former President Bill Clinton and presidential contender Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., would be in attendance, the Clinton campaign told ABC News the couple has no plans to attend.

Those that have RSVP'd to the nuptials will be whisked away on private planes to Necker Island and the neighboring Caribbean nook Virgin Gorda, whose hotels Page has reserved exclusively for his guests, according to the New York Post.

"You're talking about $1.5 million to fly 150 people out with a first class ticket," Souza said. "The private plane obviously becomes much more expensive because you're renting out the plane and the pilot."

So it probably helps that Page just bought a Boeing 767 with Google co-founder Brin.

Like Brin's recent wedding to Anne Wojcicki, many of the other details of the Page-Southworth marriage are shrouded in secrecy. But photos on the blog Valleywag.com show Necker Island outfitted with large white tents and plastic palm trees.

Souza speculated that Page went for plastic over the real thing not out of cheapness, but to avoid red tape involved in importing nonindigenous plants to a foreign island. Cost, she stressed, was likely no object.

"It's all relative. If you have billions of dollars in the bank, a couple million dollars isn't so painful," she said. "If you're flying in 600 people from all over the world, you're going to have an extravagant wedding. You're creating a once in a lifetime experience."