Inside Venus Williams and Andrea Preti’s Five-Day Wedding at Home in Palm Beach
Tennis legend Venus Williams and actor, producer, and model Andrea Preti first met in 2024 during Milan Fashion Week—at an event neither was originally supposed to attend. “We met at the Gucci show,” Venus remembers. “I was in Lake Como on a sisters’ trip when I got an invite at the last minute and decided to go on a whim, and Andrea was tired. Neither of us was planning on being there.”
After the show, the brand’s former creative director Sabato De Sarno arranged an aperitivo with a group of VIPs upstairs at the venue. “I saw V and wanted to introduce myself,” says Andrea. “She was on the sofa with her friends and family. I told her, ‘You’re so beautiful,’ and then she started speaking with me in Italian. We had a little talk, and I asked if she wanted a drink. I went to the bar to get something, and her sister Lyn came to me and said, ‘Do you mind if we start a WhatsApp conversation? I think my sister likes you.’”
Andrea and Venus immediately started texting and met up in London soon after, where Venus invited him for breakfast with her family. “I’m beyond the phase of sneaking around,” she says, noting that after spending six years single, she was looking for something simple and straightforward. Andrea joined the group and quickly acclimated. “It’s not easy to sit around the table with powerful women,” Venus says. “It was all OGs—Isha, Lyn, my mom, me. He came, and he held his own.” Later that week, Venus was hosting the Serpentine gala in Kensington Gardens, and she invited Andrea to join her. “We wanted to be discreet at the time, but he really took care of me,” Venus says. “After our dates in London, I just knew I was going to marry him. People always say they just know, and I just knew.”
It was an intense time for Venus—just 10 days later, she was diagnosed with adenomyoma. “I was so down,” she remembers of this period, during which she spoke to multiple doctors but could not find a conclusive path for treatment. “I just felt so overwhelmed.” She filled Andrea in on her situation, and he quickly took charge, offering to connect her with a doctor he knew in Italy. “It was so early in our relationship, but we were going through a lot, and he supported me,” she says. Eventually, she traveled to Italy for surgery. “Thankfully, I froze my eggs a while ago,” Venus says. “I had surgery a month after Andrea and I met. It was crazy, but that’s how we met.”
Six months after that, they got engaged on January 31, 2025, in Tuscany. “Andrea and I love to take little trips, and we went to a wonderful place with thermal waters,” she remembers. After a day of floating in saltwater pools and couples massages, they were having dinner on the patio when Andrea suggested they wish on a star. “He asked, ‘Do you want to hear my wish?’” Venus recalls. “I said, ‘Yes, great!’ And when I turned around, he had the ring in his pocket. He said, ‘Do you want to marry me?’ And I couldn’t stop jumping up and down and laughing and smiling because that’s what I do when I win big matches. I was thinking to myself, Yes, yes, yes!”
Their first wedding was on September 18 in Ischia, Italy. “We had this dream to do our wedding in Italy,” Venus explains. “But we didn’t have enough time to do the paperwork—because I’m a foreigner, it can take about eight months. So we decided to have a second wedding.”
This second wedding, held in Palm Beach, focused more on Venus’s Florida roots. Planned by Jennifer Zabinski of JZ Events, who also organized her sister Serena’s 2017 wedding, the week of events started a full six days before the ceremony and featured a jam-packed itinerary—along with lots of windy weather. “They always say weddings go so fast, and they do,” Venus says. “We started on Monday. Serena gave us this gift of a beautiful yacht, and she arranged all the food, everything. We had 10 to 12 of our closest family and friends who were in town on the boat, and we were singing, dancing, gossiping, and just enjoying each other.”
Venus wanted to soak up as much time as possible with friends and family, so each day she and Andrea hosted a pool party at their house. “We love welcoming people into our home every single day, and everyone was eager to have fun with us,” says Venus. “It was the Italians and the Americans all together.” Twenty-five of Andrea’s closest family and friends had come over from Italy for the celebration: “My partners in my restaurant, my brother, and his fiancée,” says Andrea, who is co-owner of an organic restaurant in Rome. “It’s not an easy flight to come here, especially right before Christmas.”
On Tuesday, the bridal shower took place on the back patio of the couple’s home, and was boudoir-themed. “I like to have a lot of fun,” says Venus, who wore a dress by Kim Kassas for the event with David Yurman jewelry. “I couldn’t pick one dress, and then Kesha [McLeod, her stylist] came on board.” Of the fact they pulled together over a dozen looks for the wedding week, Venus adds, “She didn’t realize I was so crazy.” Venus didn’t have time to attend Bridal Fashion Week because of her intense training schedule. “So I attended via Instagram,” Venus says. “I was on Stories, watching everything. It felt like I had a front-row seat.” After an Asian fusion dinner, Venus and her bridal party just wanted to dance—specifically, to Beyoncé. “We all channeled our inner Beyoncé,” Venus says. “Everyone had to choose a song, and we did a lip-synch battle.” (Serena even wore her look from Beyoncé’s “Sorry” music video for the occasion.)
On Wednesday, after a pool party, Venus, Andrea, and 35 of their closest family and friends headed down to Miami for a romantic dinner at the members’ club Sopra, upstairs at the Forte dei Marmi restaurant, for an Italian dinner organized by Andrea. Then, on Thursday, they held a sports day, with volleyball, tennis, dodgeball, wheelbarrow races, and pickleball. “I didn’t want to be the team captain—I just wanted to be on the team with my husband,” says Venus. “I was mostly focused on just looking cute. When I was going through the obstacle course, I kept thinking about how I didn’t want to break the strap on my dress.”
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