If you thought your wedding was pretty nice and want to feel so, so wrong about that — keep reading.
![White private jets and glasses of champagne scattered on an orange background.](png/final_size-indianwedding_20240303231257.png)
Anant Ambani — the son of Reliance Industries chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani — is marrying Radhika Merchant, daughter of Viren Merchant, CEO of Encore Healthcare Private Limited.
You know what all of those job titles mean? A ton of money.
Ambani is a member of Asia’s richest family as one of the heirs to his father’s ~$116B fortune (he’s #11 on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index).
While Ambani and Merchant will officially wed in July, they kicked things off over the weekend with a casual little pre-wedding party in Gujarat, India:
- The 1.2k-person guest list included familiar names like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Hilary Clinton, and Ivanka Trump. Oh, and a performance by Rihanna.
- There were so many private jets landing at the local airport that Indian government officials had to set up a special passport-control center to keep up.
- There was a nine-page dress code detailing how guests should show up for the affair. (Zuck rocked a golden dragonfly suit.)
And the weekend itinerary kept attendees busy with activities such as visiting the Ambani family animal rescue, nature walks to see elephants and reptiles, and, of course, a lot of really extravagant evening partying.
For richer or richer
Remember — this wasn’t the wedding. But something tells us we should buckle up for what the main event in July brings.
For reference: Ambani’s sister’s wedding in 2018, which featured a performance by Beyoncé, was estimated to have cost ~$100m.
Obviously, all of this begs one important question: did our invites get lost in the mail?