In 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 that have seen the country’s richest family open the coffers and bring out the bling in ways one has never seen before have 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, stepping out of the crease, and shaking 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 defiant on what this big, fat wedding has cost Mukesh Ambani, the ninth-richest man in the world and the richest in Asia.