New Delhi, India –
It has been a wedding like no other — and the festivities have been going on for months. So where does one start?
With a three-day pre-wedding celebration in March when Rihanna and Akon performed for a star-studded 1,200-person guest list? Or a four-day European cruise in May that featured on-deck concerts from the Backstreet Boys and Pitbull, followed by a masquerade ball where Katy Perry sang? Or last week’s traditional music night in Mumbai where Justin Bieber belted out his music hits?
Wait. There’s more. An actual wedding that finally happened early Saturday and was attended by the likes of Mike Tyson, Nick Jonas, Tony Blair, Boris Johnson and Kim Kardashian, who was escorted to her hotel room by artists playing a flute.
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The guests made a red-carpet-style arrival Saturday at the Ambani-owned, 16,000-capacity Jio World Convention Center, streaming past hundreds of photographers as if it were some Met Gala event. Foreign guests donned traditional embroidered sherwanis — long-sleeved outer coats worn by men in South Asia — with many wearing designs by India’s best-known fashion designers.
Video clips coming out from the event showed guests dancing to Bollywood music. Most television news channels offered minute-by-minute coverage of the main wedding ritual of the couple walking around the sacred fire seven times. Even FIFA President Gianni Infantino was seen shaking a leg.
Festivities are due to run through the weekend at Ambani’s 27-story family compound in Mumbai which is worth US$1 billion and contains three helipads, a 160-car garage and a private movie theater. Saturday is expected to see a divine blessings ceremony, while Sunday is kept for a final reception. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also expected to make an appearance on one of the days, according to local media.
Ambani’s critics say his company flourished mainly because of political connections during Congress party-led governments in the 1970s and ’80s and under Modi’s rule since 2014.
But not everyone is comfortable with the display of extravagance that has set a new benchmark for India’s multibillion-dollar wedding industry.
Kunal Kanase, a researcher and an activist, lives in Dharavi, one of Asia’s largest slums which is some five kilometres (three miles) away from the wedding venue. He said the money spent by the Ambanis has evoked “negative emotions among the country’s poor who struggle to make ends meet.”
“It is crazy,” Kanase said. “I don’t understand what these billionaires want to show by displaying such wealth.”