The bride is corseted and cosseted in her high-necked, hand-appliquéd Italian lace wedding dress on the grounds of an 18th-century brick villa outside of Milan. “I’m gonna cry!” says the soon-to-be Lauren Sánchez Bezos. “I’m gonna be a mess on the day, but the best kind of mess.”

Just one day after longtime Vogue chief Anna Wintour announced she would step away from her role as editor in chief of the U.S. edition, the magazine published a digital cover story featuring Lauren Sánchez (now Lauren Sánchez Bezos) in her wedding dress,

The bride resisted because “she wanted to give him this surprise at all costs,” Laura Tortora, an editor at ‘Vogue Italia,’ tells PEOPLE