After months of lavish pre-wedding celebrations, India’s wealthiest family is reportedly set to spend over $100 million, and possibly much more, on their son’s wedding, making it one of the most expensive weddings in modern history.
Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant’s four-day wedding is expected to feature extravagant decorations, numerous celebrity performances, and guests from the worlds of politics, business, sports, and the arts.
Anant Ambani is the youngest child of Mukesh Ambani, director of Reliance Industries and the 11th richest man globally, according to Forbes. The bride-to-be, Radhika Merchant, hails from a prominent family of multimillionaire pharmaceutical executives.
Although the Ambanis have not publicly disclosed the exact amount spent on the wedding, estimates suggest costs could range from around $150 million to over half a billion dollars. These expenses reportedly include booking musicians, chartering private jets, and hosting a feast for nearby underprivileged communities, according to reports from the BBC and India Times.
Given the number of high-profile international and Indian politicians attending — including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee — Mumbai police have declared the wedding a public event, according to the BBC. Nearby roads were closed to non-wedding guests, and the groom led a convoy of luxury vehicles to kick off the festivities.
This weekend marks the culmination of the couple’s celebrations, but it is far from their first event in honor of Ambani and Merchant. In March, the Ambani family invited more than a thousand people to their estate in Jamnagar, India, including notable figures like Mark Zuckerberg, Hillary Clinton, and Ivanka Trump. They constructed a glass palace inspired by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Palm House for the occasion and hired Rihanna to perform her first full-length concert in nearly a decade.
“I wanted to be fun, free, and young,” Merchant told Vogue about the all-night partying following Rihanna’s performance. “An Indian wedding is incomplete without a lot of dancing.”
In late May, Ambani and Merchant held another pre-wedding celebration on the Mediterranean Sea, hosting 1,200 people for a four-day cruise beginning in Palermo, Italy, with stops throughout the region. Guests were surprised by a Katy Perry concert in Cannes and a second concert by Pitbull after reboarding the ship.
A stop in Portofino also featured a performance by renowned opera singer Andrea Bocelli. “It was just the most magical evening,” Merchant told Vogue. “I had goosebumps.”