Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant: The Indian wedding turning heads around the world

That’s the question many in India are asking as the wedding reception for the youngest child of Asia’s richest man enters its final stages.

The celebrations are expected to culminate this weekend with the marriage of Anant Ambani, the youngest son of Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani, to Radhika Merchant, daughter of pharmaceutical tycoons Viren Merchant and Shaila Merchant.

The four months leading up to the wedding were a series of extravagant events that captured the public’s attention with glamorous outfits, dazzling jewellery, fairy-tale décor and extraordinary performances by Indian and international stars.

“It’s truly a royal wedding,” said Shobha De, an author and columnist. “India’s billionaires are the new Maharajas of India. Their shareholders are expecting a real blockbuster.”

Indians, she said, “like the British, have always loved pomp and pageantry,” and “the scale [of the wedding] It is in keeping with the Ambani family’s wealth.”

But the furor surrounding the wedding has provoked as much anger as it has public interest. Tens of millions of people live below the poverty line. Income inequality It’s extreme.

“[The wedding] “In one sense this can easily be seen as a kind of mockery, a kind of blindness to the reality of the country. But in another sense, however absurd this may be, it is in keeping with the deeply distorted, almost grotesque expansion of Indian weddings over the past decade or so,” Santosh Desai, a writer and critic, told the BBC.

“This is part of a larger change that is happening. A generation or two ago, wealth was something that was spoken of in whispers. Today, wealth should be spoken of as loud as possible. Still, the scale of this wedding is extraordinary.”

The Ambani family, who have built a vast business empire ranging from oil, telecommunications, chemicals, technology, fashion to food, are household names in India and their lives attract intense public interest.

Mr Ambani’s personal fortune is estimated at $115 billion (£90 billion). Mr Anant, 29, sits on the board of Reliance Industries.

Ambani, along with fellow Indian businessman Gautam Adani, are reportedly close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and opposition parties have accused authorities of giving unfair favour to the two companies, a charge both the government and the business leaders deny.

The Ambani family’s vast wealth and influence is well known in India, but many outside the country may not have realised the extent of their wealth until now.

But that all changed when Ambani hosted a three-day pre-wedding party for his son in March.

The celebration took place in Mr Ambani’s family hometown of Jamnagar in the western state of Gujarat, which is also home to Mr Ambani’s world’s largest oil refinery, and was attended by around 1,200 guests, including Mehta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

The party kicked off with dinner in a conservatory built especially for the event, a stunning structure said to resemble the Palm House, a crystalline Victorian building at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden that was Merchant’s favorite haunt as a college student in New York.

The evening was followed by a performance by Rihanna, and a video of the Ambani family dancing with the pop star onstage went viral. If you weren’t paying attention before, you definitely are now.

Meanwhile, dozens of expert chefs, with the services of private makeup artists and stylists, prepared around 2,000 carefully selected dishes from around the world for guests staying in luxury tents.

There was also a 10-page manual on the dress code for the event, which included a visit to a family-run animal shelter in “Jungle Fever”-themed attire, followed by a “Moulin Rouge”-themed “house party” on the sprawling grounds of a palatial mansion.

The bride wore a number of custom-made outfits, including two lehngas, or long silk bridal skirts (one encrusted with 20,000 Swarovski crystals and the other reportedly took 5,700 hours to make), as well as a pink version of the Versace dress worn by actor Blake Lively to the 2022 Met Gala.

The groom wore a mostly Dolce & Gabbana outfit and flaunted a Richard Mille watch estimated to be worth $1.5 million. A video of Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, gazing at the watch went viral in India.

Newspapers and websites perfectly captured the opulence of the glitzy event, which was attended by celebrities from around the world: “It felt like something out of the maharajahs’ time, 100 years in the future,” reported The New York Times.

There was also backlash after the Indian government overnight designated the city’s small airport an international airport, adding staff and deploying army and air force personnel to care for families.

The final night of the three-day extravaganza concluded with a confetti, fireworks and light show, setting the tone for the days to come.

In June, the bride and groom and their guests took their pre-wedding celebration abroad – literally – when they boarded a luxury cruise along Italy’s stunning blue Tyrrhenian coastline before sailing to the Mediterranean in France, where the party, which included some of Bollywood’s biggest stars, took off.

They stopped off in Rome, Portofino, Genoa and Cannes, with locals reportedly complaining about the late-night noise.

Performances at the gala included popular ’90s teen band the Backstreet Boys, singer Katy Perry and Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.

This week still another The wedding reception in the family’s hometown of Mumbai kicked off with a performance by Justin Bieber.

The video, in which Bieber sings on the side of the stage while his bride and her friends join him, has been viewed 38 million times. It shows ecstatic women in sequined dresses and saris pumping their fists in the air in joy. The audience sings along to every line of Bieber’s, “You should go and love yourself,” without missing a beat.

The scale of the celebration suggests nothing is out of reach for the family, and there’s speculation that Adele may perform at the wedding this weekend, but the family is keeping quiet.

Of course, India is no stranger to the concept of big weddings: it is the country that spends the most on weddings after the United States.

Tina Talwani, co-founder of Shaadi Squad, says there has been a noticeable trend in recent years of weddings becoming over-the-top, extravagant affairs, driven by societal expectations, the race to show status and the desire to create memorable moments.

Expensive weddings have frequently made headlines in recent years. For example: This $74 million wedding 2016.

Other Ambani children have also had lavish pre-wedding celebrations: Isha Ambani’s 2018 pre-wedding party was attended by Hillary Clinton and John Kerry and featured a performance from Beyoncé, while Akash Ambani’s pre-wedding party featured Coldplay a year later.

But in terms of scale, this is the mother of all weddings, says Ashwini Arya, owner of an event management company who has managed weddings in 14 countries.

“It’s a bible of the industry, combining logistics, technology, design and grandeur.

“It requires at least two years of preparation, multiple reconnaissance trips, approvals and permits from several countries, and the logistics of arranging security and transportation for a global celebrity,” he said.

The Ambanis have not revealed how much they spent on the wedding, but Aaliya estimates that “they have already spent 11 to 13 billion rupees.” [$132m-$156m]Rihanna is rumoured to have received $7 million (£5.5 million) for her performance, while Bieber’s pay is estimated at $10 million.

Large sums of money were also pumped into building 14 temples across the vast grounds of Jamnagar to showcase India’s cultural heritage and provide a backdrop for the wedding. As part of the celebrations, the Ambanis also hosted a mass wedding for 50 underprivileged couples.

All the Ambani children are married and this will be the last wedding in the near future, so the family is said to have left no stone unturned.

But with each passing event, public criticism of India’s celebrations has grown, from astonishment at the enormous jewels worn by Nita Ambani to outrage and anger among Mumbai residents over traffic restrictions in a city already plagued by gridlock and monsoon flooding.

But it remains an attractive marketing opportunity for the Indian wedding industry.

This is a golden opportunity for designers to showcase a more refined side of Indian haute couture, artistry and craftsmanship, says fashion designer Anand Bhushan, though he acknowledges that the frequency with celebrities changing five to six outfits for every event can sometimes feel “a bit oversaturated.”

Talwani said the wedding would be an “exemplary example” of planning a multi-event, multi-location celebration that “combined tradition, modernity and unparalleled standards of hospitality.”

Meanwhile, in Mumbai, Varindhar Chawla, one of Bollywood’s most famous paparazzi, is scouring pictures from the celebrations.

Celebrities pose at the entrance as they arrive to take part in various events.

Each of these photos, even the less-than-flattering ones – like one of a star looking stunned with camera flashes hitting his face – gets millions of views and shares.

“Normally it’s difficult to infiltrate an event of this magnitude, but this family made an extra effort to make sure we got to every detail,” he said.

“This is a royal wedding and we are being treated like royalty.”