To many in India, it is hard to remember a time when the Ambani wedding wasn’t taking place.
The marriage of the son of India’s richest man, the billionaire Mukesh Ambani, to the daughter of a millionaire was never going to be a humble affair. The industrialist is worth an estimated $120bn and over the years the Ambani family has not shied away from flashing its cash extravagantly, whether on the world’s most expensive home – a 27-storey skyscraper mansion that towers over Mumbai – or on what was previously India’s most expensive wedding, spending almost $100m on their daughter’s nuptials in 2018 where Beyoncé performed.
Yet even for the Ambani family, the months-long celebrations that have built up to the wedding of youngest son, 29-year-old Anant Ambani, to Radhika Merchant, the daughter of a pharmaceutical tycoon, have surpassed even the wildest of imaginations in terms of opulence, ostentatious displays of wealth and stamina.
The event has dominated headlines, in India and globally, for months. Estimates say the five-month wedding spectacle is likely to cost upwards of $600m – an eye-watering sum that still accounts for only 0.5% of the Ambani fortune.
The actual marriage ceremony is taking place across three day in the financial and film capital of Mumbai, starting on Friday. In domestic media, which has obsessively reported every minutia of the affair, it is now regularly referred to as “India’s own royal wedding”, a nod to the uniquely powerful status that the Ambani family holds, with everyone from Bollywood stars to the country’s most powerful politicians seemingly at their beck and call.
India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, will briefly be in attendance, though he is not officially on the guest list. Former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Tony Blair flew in to attend, while David and Victoria Beckham were also on the guest list alongside Bollywood’s biggest stars such as Shah Rukh Khan. Kim and Khloé Kardashian, also among the guests, posted videos of themselves riding around Mumbai in an auto-rickshaw before the festivities kicked off. Adele is rumoured to be performing and hundreds of private planes have been commandeered to bring in guests from across the country.
Among the Mumbai residents gripped by the splendour was Kareema Sethi, 26, who braved the rain in the hope of seeing some of the famous guests pass by. “People talk about big Indian weddings but there’s never been anything like this before, with so many huge celebrities flying in from all over the world,” she said. “It feels like the Oscars and a royal wedding all at the same time. It’s amazing for the world to see this rich, cultural side of India for once, rather than just a place of poverty.”
Leher Kala, a columnist on society and culture for the Indian Express, drew parallels with the grandiose spectacles of India’s royal families of old, when rulers of princely states would throw enormous weddings to flash and share their wealth with the kingdom.
“It’s been a crazy spectacle, a statement that the Ambanis have arrived: not just in India but globally,” says Kala. “They seem to want to recast themselves as the Windsors of India.”
She says that Mukesh Ambani’s status as a self-made man, who grew from modest beginnings to become the head of a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, gives the family a unique status among the masses, who widely view them as aspirational despite allegations of significant political patronage.
“The Ambanis are pretty much the only family who could get away with such conspicuous consumption on this scale,” Kala says. “Nobody else in India has that kind of power and social capital.”
Many have questioned how the five-month marathon of revelry has not left the bride and groom – and their many thousands of guests – already exhausted before this weekend’s wedding has even begun.
Right: Mukesh Ambani poses for a picture with his daughter Isha Ambani. Photograph: Rajanish Kakade/AP
The warm-up began back in March with a pre-wedding party that outdid most celebrity weddings. Rihanna was paid a reported $6m to perform her first concert in almost eight years and the 1,200 guests, which included Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, Ivanka Trump and Mark Zuckerberg, were treated to a light show featuring 5,500 drones and a jungle-themed party that came with a nine-page dress code.
Then there was the 800-guest wedding party cruise around the Mediterranean in May, costing $150m, with performances from Andrea Bocelli, Katy Perry, the Backstreet Boys and Pitbull. The onboard festivities were so raucous that locals in the Italian city of Genoa called the police over the noise, with similar outrage provoked in the fishing village of Portofino.
At the sangeet last week – a traditional pre-wedding night of dancing and music – Justin Bieber was flown into Mumbai to perform, at a reported cost of $10m.
A ‘statement of status’
Exact details of the three-day wedding in Mumbai – starting with the traditional Hindu ceremony – have remained under wraps, though the theme is an “ode to Varanasi”, one of India’s holiest cities for Hindus. The lavish invitation was a box engraved with a Hindu deity filled with gifts that played Hindu mantras when opened. Dishes made by street food vendors from Varanasi will be among those served to the guests.
The main wedding ceremonies will take place at a vast convention centre in Mumbai, which has been transformed to resemble the ancient winding streets and ghats of Varanasi, complete with local craftsman, street food stalls, bangle sellers, puppeteers and astrologers where guests can get their astrological charts read. To the outrage of many Mumbai residents, the police have restricted access to roads surrounding the convention centre for the three days, declaring it a “public event”.
There will also be family events held at Antilia, the Ambani’s mega multi-storey Mumbai mansion which has a ballroom, pool, helipad and cinema, which was adorned top to toe in lights and flowers for the festivities.
The unadulterated public opulence of the wedding has attracted criticism from some, who see it as a sign of the growing inequality in India, where the number of billionaires has grown to over 200 while poverty remains rampant. According to recent reports, the country’s richest 1% own over 40% of the country’s wealth.
Yet others said it was to be celebrated, bringing international attention to India and showing off the very best of the big Indian wedding traditions, which remain a central part of the country’s culture and heritage. A recent report by Jefferies, an investment banking and capital market firm, found that Indian people spend nearly double on weddings compared with education.
Mareesha Parikh, the co-founder of the Mumbai wedding planning agency Swaaha Weddings, said the decision by the Ambanis to use the wedding to assert their status and power was symptomatic of a wider trend in India.
“Over the past decade, the main shift I’ve noticed is weddings going from being just about emotions to being about statement of status,” says Parikh. “Weddings are now the greatest platform for any business house, any industrialist, any person really to make a statement to their community about what a big deal they are.
“It’s great for our industry as it means people are making huge investments in celebrations. With a family like the Ambanis, this wedding is doing this on an international scale, like we’ve never seen before.”