After months of extravagant pre-wedding festivities, India’s wealthiest family is reportedly spending over $100 million, potentially 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 elaborate decorations, numerous celebrity performances, and guests from the worlds of politics, business, sports, and the arts.
Ambani is the youngest child of Reliance Industries director Mukesh Ambani, the 11th richest man in the world, according to Forbes. Bride-to-be Merchant comes from a prominent family as well; her parents are multimillionaire pharmaceutical executives.
While the Ambanis have not publicly disclosed the total cost of the wedding, estimates suggest it ranges from $150 million to over half a billion dollars, covering expenses such as booking musicians, chartering private jets, and hosting a feast for nearby underprivileged communities, according to reports from the BBC and the India Times.
Mumbai police have declared the wedding a public event due to the numerous high-profile attendees, including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, as reported by the BBC. Roads near the event venues were sealed off to non-wedding guests, while the groom led a convoy of luxury vehicles to kick off the weekend celebrations.
This weekend marks the culmination of the couple’s celebrations, but it is not the first grand event in their honor. In March, the Ambani family invited over a thousand people to their estate in Jamnagar, India, including Mark Zuckerberg, Hillary Clinton, and Ivanka Trump. For the occasion, the Ambanis constructed a glass palace inspired by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Palm House 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 that followed Rihanna’s performance. “An Indian wedding is incomplete without a lot of dancing.”
In late May, Ambani and Merchant hosted another pre-wedding celebration on the Mediterranean Sea. They hosted 1,200 people for a four-day cruise that began in Palermo, Italy, and included stops throughout the region. Guests were treated to a surprise Katy Perry concert when the cruise stopped in Cannes. After reboarding the ship, there was a second concert featuring Pitbull.
A stop in Portofino featured a performance by acclaimed opera singer Andrea Bocelli.
“It was just the most magical evening,” Merchant told Vogue about Bocelli’s performance. “I had goosebumps.”