NEW DELHI – It has been a wedding like no other — and the festivities have been going on for months. So where does one start?
With a three-day pre-wedding celebration in March when Rihanna and Akon performed for a star-studded 1,200-person guest list? Or a four-day European cruise in May that featured on-deck concerts from the Backstreet Boys and Pitbull, followed by a masquerade ball where Katy Perry sang? Or last week’s traditional music night in Mumbai where Justin Bieber belted out his music hits?
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Wait. There’s more. An actual wedding that finally happened early Saturday and was attended by the likes of Mike Tyson, Nick Jonas, Tony Blair, Boris Johnson and Kim Kardashian, who was escorted to her hotel room by artists playing a flute.
Mind you, almost everyone from Bollywood was there as well. And the groom arrived in a Rolls Royce, with marching bands playing in the procession.
The wedding of Anant Ambani, the youngest son of Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, has been a global spectacle. Not only has it brought the world’s most famous celebrities, powerful politicians and business tycoons under one roof, it has also highlighted the immense clout of the Indian billionaire.
The lavishness has also led many to raise questions about rising inequality in India, where the gap between the rich and poor is growing and the number of billionaires has shot to over 200. According to some economic surveys, the country’s richest 1% own over 40% of the country’s total wealth.
“The problem with the Ambani wedding isn’t the ostentatiousness. It is the exhibitionism,” wrote author Salil Tripathi on social platform X.
With a net worth of $116 billion, Ambani senior has made sure the wedding celebrations are the talk of the town
Millions have been spent on grand jewels worn by the family's women, evoking memories of the long-gone era of Indian royalty. The wedding invitations were made of silver and gold. Private jets have been hired to fly in some of the guests. And Bollywood’s most sought-after designer, Manish Malhotra, is serving as the wedding’s creative director.
This grand display of opulence is estimated to have cost the Ambani family more than half a billion dollars, according to a wedding planning app, Bridebook.com.
Let’s do that math.
The money spent — so far — is still little less than half a percent of the family’s total wealth, in a country where millions of middle-class families find it hard to save for their children’s weddings and sometimes spent their entire savings to pay for the celebrations.
Ambani, the world’s ninth richest man, is not new to hosting lavish parties. He made headlines in 2018 when Beyoncé performed at pre-wedding festivities for his daughter that were attended by former U.S. Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.
This time he made sure no expense was spared for his youngest son, Anant, who oversees the conglomerate’s renewable and green energy expansion. His bride, Radhika Merchant, is the daughter of Viren and Shaila Merchant, the founders of pharmaceutical company Encore Healthcare.
The guests made a red-carpet-style arrival Saturday at the Ambani-owned, 16,000-capacity Jio World Convention Center, streaming past hundreds of photographers as if it were some Met Gala event. Foreign guests donned traditional embroidered sherwanis — long-sleeved outer coats worn by men in South Asia — with many wearing designs by India’s best-known fashion designers.
Video clips coming out from the event showed guests dancing to Bollywood music. Most television news channels offered minute-by-minute coverage of the main wedding ritual of the couple walking around the sacred fire seven times. Even FIFA President Gianni Infantino was seen shaking a leg.
Festivities are due to run through the weekend at Ambani’s 27-story family compound in Mumbai which is worth $1 billion and contains three helipads, a 160-car garage and a private movie theater. Saturday is expected to see a divine blessings ceremony, while Sunday is kept for a final reception. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also expected to make an appearance on one of the days, according to local media.
Ambani’s critics say his company flourished mainly because of political connections during Congress party-led governments in the 1970s and ’80s and under Modi’s rule since 2014.
But not everyone is comfortable with the display of extravagance that has set a new benchmark for India's multibillion-dollar wedding industry.
Kunal Kanase, a researcher and an activist, lives in Dharavi, one of Asia’s largest slums which is some 5 kilometers (3 miles) away from the wedding venue. He said the money spent by the Ambanis has evoked “negative emotions among the country’s poor who struggle to make ends meet.”
“It is crazy," Kanase said. "I don’t understand what these billionaires want to show by displaying such wealth.”