Wedding of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant

The wedding of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant was a 3-day event that took place from 12 July 2024 until the 14th of July 2024 in the city of Mumbai, India at the Antilia building and Jio Convention Center. The groom was the son of Indian businessman Mukesh Ambani, the richest man in Asia, and Nita Ambani. Mukesh Ambani is the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, while the bride is the daughter of Viren Merchant, the CEO of a healthcare company.

The wedding was described as India's "wedding of the year" and "India’s own royal wedding". The New York Times described it as introducing "the world to [India]'s Gilded Age". Estimates for the wedding's cost range from $300 million to $600 million, leading to criticism regarding wealth inequality in India.

Background
Anant Ambani is the youngest son of Mukesh Ambani, who has an estimated net worth of $123.3 billion, making him the richest man in Asia and ninth in the world. Mukesh Ambani is the head of Reliance Industries and Anant is in charge of Reliance's energy business and is the director of other boards of Reliance subsidaries. He also runs Vantara, an animal rescue center in Jamnagar. He graduated with a bachelor's in business management from Brown University in 2017.

Radhika Merchant is the daughter of Viren Merchant, who is the CEO of Encore Healthcare and has been described as a pharmaceutical tycoon. Radhika has served as the marketing director for her father's company after graduating from New York University.

The two said they met in 2017 during a drive after being introduced by mutual friends. On 29 December 2023, Ambani proposed at the Shrinathji Temple in Rajasthan.

Pre-wedding festivities
The first pre-wedding celebration was held in Jamnagar, with around 1,200 invited guests at the beginning of March 2024. A number of entertainers performed, such as Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone, as well as Rihanna, who gave her first full-length concert in eight years. Guests were told to wear jungle fever outfits when visiting Vantara, the animal rescue shelter run by Anant Ambani. The second celebration was a four-day cruise through the Mediterranean in late May 2024. Guests saw surprise performances from the Backstreet Boys, Katy Perry, and Pitbull.

Leading up to the ceremony on 2 July 2024, the Ambani family organized a mass wedding ceremony for more then 50 underprivileged couples, and the week after held a pre-wedding concert with performances by Justin Bieber, and Bollywood stars Alia Bhatt, Ranveer Singh, and Salman Khan. The sangeet ceremony for the couple, where the bride and groom, and their families preformed choreographed dances on July 5, with several poojas and a mehendi ceremony following. On July 11, the bride and groom celebrated their haldi, where the couple are covered in turmeric paste as a blessing.

Lehenga
The wedding dress was designed by the fashion house "Abu Jani Sandeep Khosla" owned by fashion and costume designers Sandeep Khosla and Abu Jani (who had won the National Film Award for Best Costume Design for their work in Devdas (2002 Hindi film)), Radhika's bridal lehenga featured zardozi cut-work with Gujarati cultural significance, a trailing ghagra with a second detachable trail, a 5-meter head veil, a blouse, and a tissue shoulder dupatta. The ghagra, adorned with three borders of red, showcased the finest amalgamation of naqshi, saadi, and zardozi, with intricate floral booties decorated with stones, sequins, tamba tikkis, and red resham. The head veil (dupatta) featured delicate jaali and cut-work, while the detachable trail boasted an 80-inch zardozi marvel. The fully embroidered red shoulder dupatta added maximal drama to the silhouette.

Her lehenga also featured a personalised "AR" brooch which represents the initials of her name and her husband Anant's name.

Jewelry
The jewelry pieces worn by Merchant on her wedding day included a central emerald and diamond necklace that was designed by Nisha Mehta of the Nisha M company based in Mumbai. The necklace was reportedly a five strand of diamonds with a large pendant of Zambian emerald and diamond suspended from it. She was also wearing heirloom family jewels gifted to her by her mother Shaila.

Critical appraisal
India Today described the lehenga as "fairytale to life". Another newspaper company described the lehenga as "Radhika's bridal ensemble was a vision of elegance and tradition, featuring a beautifully embroidered lehenga that showcased the designers' signature craftsmanship."

Pinkvilla stated that the "Bride looks like a royal queen in her FIRST LOOK".

Wedding
The reported $600 million, four day wedding rituals began on 12 July 2024 with a traditional Hindu wedding ceremony followed by a reception that was planned to run through the weekend. The wedding festivities were be split between Antilia, the home of the Ambanis, and the Jio World Convention Centre (Jio is a subsidiary of Reliance).

The venue was decorated with floral designs and sculptures created by florist Preston Bailey who was hired in April 2024. Among the designs by Bailey were 60 floral animal sculptures including tigers, elephants, monkeys and replicas of the couples two dogs. Each sculpture, reportedly required between 100,000 to 200,000 flowers, which were majorly sourced from India.

The guest list is estimated in the "few thousands" with Mumbai Police preemptively rerouted traffic around the Mumbai venue. The guest list, although not confirmed by the Ambani family, included Bollywood celebrities Amitabh Bachchan, Ranbir Kapoor, and Indian cricketers Sachin Tendulkar, Jasprit Bumrah, and Suryakumar Yadav. Along with former British Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Boris Johnson, Saudi Aramco CEO Amin H Nasser, US politician John Kerry, and celebrities like Adele, David Beckham, John Cena and the Kardashians.

Response
Some Indian politicians criticised the amount of money spent on the wedding, with Shahid Siddiqui, a former member of the upper house of Parliament, calling it the "most vulgar and ostentatious marriage ever seen" and Thomas Isaac, a former finance minister for Kerala and member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), stating that "...such ostentatious expenditure is a sin."

Members of the Indian public were divided about the wedding. Some called the wedding an "awe-inspiring showcase" while others pointed to how it highlighted the uneven development, as its budget could possibly eclipse the yearly education budget of several small Indian states. Reportedly the most common reaction in the working class of Mumbai, was frustration on the system which has allowed the inequality of resources. One worker echoed a common strain of "Ambani earned his money, and it’s his right to spend it on his own children", but bemoaned how the city could find resources to assist in the wedding security, but not keep up infrastructure concerns like potholes or flooding.