Still showing, a wedding without end: Cost of OTT Ambani affair? Billions & counting

The consistently over-the-top festivities have made the world sit up and take notice, with speculation — ranging from feverish to derisive — on what this big, fat wedding has cost Mukesh Ambani. Estimates have settled around the ₹5,000-crore mark, which is a paltry 0.5 per cent of Ambani’s worth

Staff members at Mukesh Ambani’s home, Antilia, dance to drumbeats on the day of Anant Ambani’s wedding in Mumbai on Friday : Reuters picture

Priyanka Roy, TT, 14.07.24 :  Nine months — that’s how long it takes to birth a baby. At seven months, and running, the Anant Ambani-Radhika Merchant wedding has almost touched that milestone.

Since the beginning of the year, at least one extravagant ceremony has been held every six weeks.

The celebrations have been billed as “the wedding of the century” by goggle-eyed observers, which has inevitably included all of us, thanks to the millions of Instagram reels and paparazzi videos that have flooded our feeds over the last few months (the force is always strong with the Ambani algorithm).

A three-day celebration in the family’s native town of Jamnagar, a four-day cruise on a ship on the Italian-French seas and numerous ceremonies, which have seen the country’s richest family open the coffers and bring out the bling in ways one has never seen before, has mostly been an excuse to band together Bollywood’s biggest and brightest to party the night(s) away. It has propelled Rihanna to jet down for only her second stage act in the last six years, the other being a performance at the 2023 Academy Awards where she was nominated. It has pushed The Backstreet Boys out of semi-retirement. It has made Justin Bieber flash his boxers and lip-sync to some of his chart-toppers and fly out $10 million richer. It has made “pre-wedding” an indelible part of our vocabulary.

It has made the always reticent Mahendra Singh Dhoni — famous for retiring to the back of the crowd after handing over the trophy to his teammates after every tournament win during his career — step out of the crease and shake a leg at many a pre-wedding function. It has put the “viral” in paparazzo Viral Bhayani. It has given social media star Orry seven months to be a high-functioning “liver”.

The consistently over-the-top festivities have made the world sit up and take notice, with speculation — ranging from feverish to derisive — on what this big, fat wedding has cost Mukesh Ambani, the ninth-richest man in the world and the richest in Asia.

Anant Ambani, son of Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, and Radhika Merchant, daughter of industrialist Viren Merchant, react during their wedding celebrations in Mumbai.: Reuters

Estimates have settled around the ₹5,000-crore mark, which is a paltry 0.5 per cent of Ambani’s worth.

March witnessed the groom’s mother Nita Ambani get together with ace designer Manish Malhotra, who functioned as “creative director” for the festivities, to design a host of theme nights in Jamnagar.

That included the construction of a glass palace evoking the Palm House in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden — a favourite haunt of the bride when she was a college student in New York City — adorned in flowers from highly decorated American floral designer Jeff Leatham, whose works of art have been a staple at every Kardashian-Jenner wedding. At Jamnagar, a mini train transported the guests throughout the length and breadth of the sprawling festivities. A total of 5,500 drones — which, according to industry experts would have easily cost upwards of half a million dollars — took over the Jamnagar sky, becoming India’s largest drone show ever.

At Jamnagar, everyone from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to Microsoft man Bill Gates, dressed in blingy custom sherwanis, participated with gusto. A video of Zuckerberg — whose net worth is estimated at $176 billion — picking his jaw off the floor while admiring Anant’s custom-made Richard Mille watch, priced at ₹15 crore, quickly became viral meme material. On the first night in Jamnagar, Rihanna mispronounced the bride’s name as “Radiki” on stage but that hardly mattered. The Diamonds singer traipsed back to the US with a cool $7 million in her bank account.

For most of Bollywood — Bachchans to Khans to Kapoors — the last seven months have meant clearing out schedules and blocking bulk dates to prioritise every Ambani pre-wedding do. This year, many Bolly Gen-Z faces have been spotted more between Jamnagar and Jio World Convention Centre than they have on the big screen. It is courtesy this wedding that the world knows that the Pahariya brothers exist, one of whom is dating actress Janhvi Kapoor.

Nothing has been done in half measures at this wedding. The Mediterranean cruise in May saw the Ambanis fully sponsor 1,200 guests, most of which included Bollywood glitterati, for four days and nights of non-stop partying, both on sea and land. Katy Perry, one of the highest-selling artistes of all time, brought out the “fireworks” in a special soiree on board. The Roar singer, according to rough estimates, was paid $5 million for the performance.

A toga party with David Guetta playing a set, Pitbull popping in to drum up some beats, a masquerade ball at Cannes and an Italian-styled “marketplace” for which the Ambanis shut down an entire plaza along the Portofino shore, with celebrated Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli on song, were the highlights of the uber-luxe celebrations. The affair reportedly cost in the region of a few million. But then, who is counting? Certainly not the Ambanis.

The wedding in India, which is supposed to end this weekend, kicked off with a sangeet in which the groom, known for his love for brooches and other baubles, wore an Abu Jani-Sandeep Khosla jacket, which he requested be embroidered with real gold thread. The jacket was adorned with a custom-made Panthere De Cartier Brooch, worth a few crores. His would-be bride matched the bling quotient with a necklace estimated to cost ₹400 crore. For perspective, once considered a “khiladi” of the box office, Akshay Kumar’s last five films have cumulatively failed to reach the ₹400-crore mark.

An integral part of the lavish wedding has been the wardrobe of the bride and groom, mostly custom-made by some of the biggest names in global fashion. For one of the nights on the cruise, Radhika wore a custom Versace gown in a pink shade, earlier made exclusively for Hollywood star Blake Lively when the latter co-chaired the Met Gala in 2022. On another occasion, she donned a custom-made Grace Ling Couture piece, which was 3D-carved and made using Aerospace Aluminum Technology. Over the last year, there have been at least 50 custom pieces designed for the bride, each costing upwards of a few million dollars.

American media personalities and sisters Kim Kardashian and Khloe Kardashian arrive to attend Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant’s wedding, in Mumbai.: PTI

Nita Ambani, her daughter Isha and daughter-in-law Shloka have also stocked up on shelves of customised outfits, with Anil Kapoor’s daughter Rhea functioning as the family’s primary stylist, along with veteran Anaita Shroff Adajania. At one of the pre-wedding events earlier this week, Isha wore the first-ever modern-day custom sari by Italian luxury brand Schiaparelli. The price tag is not available for everyone’s viewing.

The jewellery worn by the family — with each of them partial to emeralds, the bigger the better — has reportedly amounted to a number that can challenge the GDP of a mid-level economy. Lorraine Schwartz has been a big favourite, with the American bespoke jewellery designer, whose starting price point could treble the heartbeat of even some of the most well-heeled, counting Beyonce as one of her biggest clients.

For the wedding, which has now reached its final leg in Mumbai, the Ambanis have reportedly hired Falcon-2000 jets to ferry guests. The “lagna vidha” aka the exchange of garlands, which took place on Friday, saw former British premieres Tony Blair and Boris Johnson in attendance, with wrestling icon John Cena showing off his Bhangra moves in a safa. The bride’s walk down the aisle was accompanied by a live performance from Shreya Ghoshal. Bollywood went through several changes of clothes through the night. Traffic was held up for hours in rain-soaked Mumbai and employees of many offices in the upscale area of Bandra-Kurla complex, where the venue of the wedding was, were asked to work from home. It was an evening that brought Kim Kardashian and Mamata Banerjee — whose names will perhaps never be uttered in the same sentence again — under the same roof.

The curtains come down with the reception in Mumbai on Sunday evening. A massive withdrawal phase is in the offing. Our Instagram reels will suddenly be bereft of garish clothes. Paps will once again make airports their primary workplace. Many in Bollywood will be rendered unemployed once more. Unless the Ambanis decide to thrust a post-wedding blitz on us. Beyonce is going through her schedule as we speak.