How foreign media covered Ambani wedding: Extravagant, lavish, world’s most expensive | Trending

Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant tied the knot in one of the most high-profile weddings to ever take place in India. Billionaire heir Anant Ambani is the younger son of Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani and his wife, Nita Ambani. His wedding to Encore Healthcare CEO Viren Merchant’s daughter, Radhika Merchant, took place on July 12 in Mumbai. Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant tied the knot on July 12.(Instagram/@epicstories.in) The Ambani wedding marked the culmination of months of pre-wedding festivities. The couple’s roka took place in 2022 at the Shrinathji Temple in Nathdwara. In early 2023, the Ambanis hosted a grand engagement party for the couple at their palatial Mumbai residence, Antilia. The engagement ceremony was preceded a mehendi function in January 2023, which took place at a five-star Mumbai hotel. Then, in February 2024, the pre-wedding festivities began in earnest with a Lagan Lakhvanu ceremony. In early March the same year, the Ambani family hosted a three-day extravaganza at their sprawling Jamnagar estate, which was attended several national and international VIPs. The guest l included Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, besides a galaxy of Bollywood stars, athletes, business leaders and diplomats. At the Jamnagar festivities, guests were treated to private concerts Rihanna and Diljit Dosanjh over three nights of grand parties. The Ambani family then hosted a luxury cruise for hundreds of guests in late May. Many Bollywood stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Ranveer Singh and Ananya Panday were part of the cruise that had stops across the Mediterranean. The guests on the cruise got to enjoy private concerts Shakira, the Backstreet Boys, Katy Perry and David Guetta. The week leading up to the big day on July 12 was equally eventful. It featured a sangeet (with a concert from Justin Bieber), a mameru ceremony, a garba night, a haldi ceremony, a mehendi ceremony, a mass wedding for the underprivileged, a Shiv Shakti pooja and a Graha Shanti pooja. Here is how the foreign media covered the Ambani wedding: The Washington Post“Asia’s richest man is hosting a ‘spectacular,’ ‘vulgar,’ star-studded wedding,” reads a headline on the website of the American daily newspaper. The piece noted how the extensive guest l attracted more attention that the couple themselves – “with pop stars, politicians, tech tycoons and Bollywood stars setting social media abuzz with their attendance.” The SunUK’s The Sun called “the world’s most expensive wedding” in an article filled with statics. The British tabloid reported that the Ambani family booked 100 private jets to fly international guests to India, decorated the venue with 20 million flowers, served over 37,500 meal options created an army of 500 chefs and spent between ₹6 to 7 lakh on each invite. “But in India, a country where the richest one per cent own more than 40 per cent of the country’s total wealth, Anant and Radhika’s wedding will have been a hard pill to swallow,” the newspaper noted. Al JazeeraAl Jazeera highlighted the criticism that the over-the-top festivities drew. “Star-studded Ambani wedding highlights India’s rich vs poor divide,” reads a headline on the news portal. In another piece, Al Jazeera spoke of the public ire at traffic restrictions which were put in place in Mumbai for the wedding. The GuardianThe Guardian ran a couple of articles on the Ambani wedding, one showing the several guests who descended upon Mumbai for the celebrations. In an opinion piece for the publication, Hannah Ellis-Petersen said that Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant’s wedding “surpassed even the wildest of imaginations in terms of opulence, ostentatious displays of wealth and stamina.”