- Radhika Merchant and Anant Ambani are set to tie the knot on Friday in Mumbai.
- Four Indian event planners shared what it’s like to plan a big celebrity wedding.
- The Ambani wedding is already setting trends for couples planning their own nuptials.
The wedding of the year is coming.
After rounds of opulent pre-wedding festivities, Radhika Merchant and Anant Ambanithe youngest son of The richest man in Asiaare scheduled to get married on Friday in Mumbai.
Guests, who have so far included Bollywood actors, Indian cricketers and international business leaders, will also attend events on Saturday and a reception on Sunday.
During a pre-wedding event in March, Ambani said his mother worked 18 hours a day for four months leading up to the festivities.
“All this was created by my mother and no one else, and my mother has put in her best efforts in the last four months,” Ambani said, according to a video from the speech published in March.
Planning an event like this takes a lot of dedication, according to four wedding planners who spoke to Business Insider about what goes into organizing a multi-day Indian celebrity wedding.
The biggest cost is the location
Planners BI spoke to said a typical multi-day wedding they plan costs between INR 5 crore and INR 10 crore, or about $1.2 million.
Crore is an Indian term for 10 million; 1 crore rupees is equivalent to about $120,000.
Whether it’s a high-dollar wedding like the Ambanis or an upper-middle-class family wedding, the breakdown of major costs in an Indian wedding looks almost the same, says an event planner told BI.
About 40% to 50% of the budget goes to the venue, which includes food and rooms for guests, said Nishita Aggarwal, founder of The Event Designer, a Delhiwedding planning company based in São Paulo.
Then, 25% to 30% of the costs go toward decorations, which include elaborate backdrops, tents, and floor-to-ceiling floral arrangements.
About 10% is spent on entertainment. The Ambanis have booked Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, The Backstreet Boys and Pitbull for pre-wedding functions in recent months.
Other families spend lavishly on entertainers, including famous singers and DJs, said Purvi Modgil, a wedding planner in Mumbai.
“If you plan to call on three or four of them for different key functions, that could also represent a good cost,” she said.
The remaining 10% usually goes into detail about wedding gifts and logistics for family and guests.
“Now, when it comes to a high-net-worth wedding or a celebrity wedding, everything becomes 10 times or 100 times” that cost, Aggarwal said. “There is no barrier in the budget.”
Planners’ cost estimates for the Ambani wedding varied widely, from tens of millions of dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars.
Anant’s older sister, Isha Ambani, tied the knot in 2018 in a similarly lavish wedding, which included a performance by Beyoncé. While media outlets speculated a price tag of $100 million, a spokesperson for Ambani-owned company Reliance said it cost less than $15 million, according to a Forbes article at the time.
A family spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on the cost of Anant Ambani’s wedding.
Pre-wedding events have been making headlines for months. With so many celebrities and business leaders vying for an invite, the nuptials are also a business networking event, Aggarwal said.
Each main family member is given a “shadow”
Many couples do not want to hold their weddings at venues where other famous families have held their nuptials, Aggarwal said.
“They want everything to be unique,” she said. “The decor has to be something different that no one has ever thought of. It’s almost like a big movie set.”
For a large celebrity wedding, planners divide their staff into teams and hire hundreds of additional people before and on the day of the ceremony.
With chefs, waiters, lighting and audio crews and decorators, about 500 people typically work at the event, Modgil said.
Planners also assign butlers to each key family member. These staff members, called “shadows,” hold their phones and gifts and make sure they stay hydrated and have everything they need.
“There are over 70 suppliers and vendors we work with for each wedding,” said Darshan Shroff, a wedding planner in Mumbai. “I like to describe wedding planners in India as circus ringmasters.”
Privacy and security are top concerns
Many celebrity or influencer couples are very selective about how their marriage is portrayed in the news and on social media.
Planners have strict guidelines that restrict vendors from posting about attire, decor, or flowers before a set date. Most large weddings also collect their guests’ phone numbers for privacy, and couples have teams that work with the media.
“You can’t have too many people out there taking pictures. It makes them very uncomfortable,” Modgil said of celebrity guests and couples.
Major security companies and even local authorities can outline security plans.
“The minute there is any kind of celebrity, be it political or Bollywood, security becomes very important,” Modgil said. “We have had separate people escorting them and even taking them back because sometimes they are even surrounded.”
Families and their guests are not always easy to please.
Aggarwal said he has planned weddings where celebrities call to confirm what kind of hotel suite they will be staying in and what kind of car will pick them up. Everything has to match their lifestyle.
Setting a model for other marriages
The Ambani wedding is already influencing the way other Indians are imagining and planning their own nuptials.
Planners told BI that brides are asking for the same designers that Radhika Merchant wore for her pre-wedding events, like the custom lehengas designed by Abu Jani Sandeep Khosla and Tarun Tahiliani.
Planners hope the main wedding will leave an even bigger mark.
“Given the immense influence celebrities have, their weddings often become models for future celebrations around the world,” said Bharat Jagasia, a Delhi-based wedding planner.
“For the Ambani wedding, I am particularly excited to see how they differentiate the main event from the pre-wedding functions,” he said.
The festivities are scheduled to begin on Friday at the Jio World Convention Centre, which is owned by the Ambani family. It can accommodate more than 16,000 guests.
July 12, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated Nishita Aggarwal Location. She lives in Delhi, not Mumbai.
