India’s Extravagant Ambani Wedding, Explained: NPR

What are reality star Kim Kardashian, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and famous Indian cricketer Jasprit Bumrah all doing in the same room?

Of course, going to a wedding.

Anati Ambani, the youngest son of Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man, married Radhika Merchant in a three-day wedding ceremony in Mumbai this weekend.

The event, which has been criticized as a display of extreme privilege in an impoverished country, has been in the news for much of the year as the wedding ceremonies and parties featured some of the world’s most famous names.

The cost of the wedding is estimated at $132 to $156 million, but the exact amount is unknown.

This isn’t the first time the Ambanis have been in the news for their extravagant weddings: in 2018, Beyoncé performed at a party celebrating the wedding of Isha Ambani, Mukesh Ambani’s daughter.

Mukesh Ambani is the owner of Reliance Industries, a multinational conglomerate that sells everything from petrochemicals to budget phones.

Indian weddings are known to be lavish, lavish affairs, with multiple religious ceremonies and parties to celebrate the groom and bride. It is a multi-billion dollar industry, making it the second largest wedding market in the world after the United States.

Indian weddings are special because they last for several days and involve various events and festivities, each with its own cultural significance.

The Ambani wedding is no exception. Four months before the wedding, on Friday, the festivities began.

Indian weddings vary greatly depending on the region of India that the families come from, and in some cases can be much smaller. The Ambanis come from Gujarat, a state in northern India, and have followed many of the customs typical of that region.

The wedding itself

The week’s wedding celebrations began on Monday with a private haldi ceremony. In a haldi ceremony, a turmeric paste is applied to the bride and groom’s face or body by their friends and family. Haldi, which means turmeric in Hindi, is known for its anti-inflammatory and healing properties. Some believe that haldi has a purifying effect on the bride and groom. The ceremony is usually private and attended only by the closest friends and families, a tradition that the Ambanis followed.

The wedding itself began on Friday and lasted well into the next day. The main ceremony took place at Mumbai’s Jio World Convention Center, which has a capacity of 16,000. A red carpet was rolled out for the guests, who included wrestler and actor John Cena, singer Nick Jonas and reality TV stars Kim and Khole Kardashian.

In a traditional Hindu wedding, the bride and groom are usually tied together with a piece of cloth, while the groom leads the bride around a fire pit seven times. These are called the pherasor the wedding vows. A pundit, or Hindu priest, usually chants the vows in Sanskrit as the couple circles the flames.

Each lap around the fire symbolizes a different commitment the bride and groom make to each other and to God. vows are over, the couple is officially married. The ceremony can last anywhere from 45 minutes to three hours, depending on the exact traditions the couple follows.

The crowd at Ambani’s wedding was so large that police had to divert traffic around the venue. It is the monsoon season in India and heavy rains have disrupted flights into Mumbai all week.

The (multiple) engagement ceremonies

After a quiet proposal at a temple in December, Radhika Merchant attended her first engagement party in January: a traditional Indian mehndi ceremony. The ceremony, also known as a henna ceremony, is typically held the night before a wedding. The bride has henna, a dye that leaves a reddish-orange stain, applied to her hands and feet. Mehndi ceremonies are typically organized by the bride’s side of the family and are meant to give the bride a chance to relax, since henna takes a few hours to develop after application.

After the ceremony, the couple had a gol dhana ceremony, a Gurjati engagement party where sweets made from coriander seeds are exchanged between the bride and groom. Usually, the bride arrives at the groom’s house with these sweets and other gifts, which are exchanged between families to symbolize their engagement.

Ambani’s Gol Dhana ceremony attracted some of Bollywood’s biggest names, including actors Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan, who are household names in India.

The pre-wedding parties, cruises and performances

The wedding first made headlines in March when singer Rihanna performed at a pre-wedding party in the family’s hometown. The guest list of 1,200 included Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

Shortly after their celebrity event, the family embarked on a four-day European cruise on a luxury ship. There was a strict no-phones policy, but leaked footage showed singers including Pitbull and the Backstreet Boys performing on the yacht. Katy Perry also performed for the family at one of their stops on their cruise.

The Ambanis didn’t settle for just one rare performance at their wedding celebrations: last week, Justin Bieber performed at another wedding celebration at a Mumbai arts centre founded by Anant Merchant’s mother.

While Bieber’s performance was the official title, all of these parties, which spanned multiple continents and months, can be considered part of a sangeet. Usually, the sangeet is a day-long celebration of dance and music before the wedding. Family members usually perform a choreographed dance to a Bollywood song, leading to a final dance between the bride and groom, symbolizing the two families becoming one. The word sangeet is Sanskrit and literally means “sung together”

What happens after the wedding?

After the wedding was over, the couple began the final part of a traditional Hindu ceremony, be ashirwad, known as the divine blessing ceremony. Here the couple asks for blessings from the elders in the community. Usually the couple is showered with rose petals and rice as they walk back to the altar, concluding the wedding ceremony for the bride and groom.

The following is the Mangal-Ustavor the reception: like an American wedding, this is a party that takes place right after the wedding ceremonies are over. Here the current husband and wife get their first chance to dance and celebrate their new life as a married couple.

The Ambanis’ wedding reception is expected to take place at the Ambani family’s $2 billion mansion in Mumbai. It will be as extravagant and star-studded as the past four months of festivities.