Ambani wedding: After months of celebrations, the ‘Windsors of India’ finally set to marry

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, billionaire Mukesh Ambani, to the daughter of a millionaire was never going to be a humble affair. The industrialist is now 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 back 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, 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, both 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 will take place across a three-day event 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 be in attendance. So too – if reports are to be believed – will Hillary Clinton, Boris Johnson, Tony Blair, David and Victoria Beckham and Kim and Khloé Kardashian alongside all of Bollywood’s biggest stars such as Shah Rukh Khan, as well as industrialists, diplomats and Instagram influencers to ensure every second is documented for the masses. Adele and Drake are rumoured to be performing and hundreds of private planes have been commandeered to bring in guests from across the country.

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 both 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 head of a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, gives them 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 power and social capital.”

Many have openly 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.

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 in to Mumbai to perform, at a reported cost of $10m.

A ‘statement of status’

Details of the three-day wedding in Mumbai – starting on Friday with the traditional Hindu ceremony – have remained under wraps. However the lavish invitation – an engraved box filled with gifts that played Hindu mantras when opened – suggested it would be yet another no-expenses spared affair.

Events will take place at a vast convention centre in Mumbai as well as Antilia, the Ambani’s mega multi-storey Mumbai mansion which has a ballroom, pool, helipad and cinema. To the outrage of many Mumbai residents, the police have restricted access to roads surrounding the event for the three days, declaring it a “public event”.

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 in the country has grown to over 200, while at the same time poverty remains rampant. According to recent reports, the country’s richest 1% now 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 what they spend on education.

Mareesha Parikh, co-founder of 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,” she adds. “With a family like the Ambanis, this wedding is doing this on an international scale, like we’ve never seen before.”