Behind the scenes of billionaire Indian weddings: Hired 'shadows,' phone bans, and a circus master to lead the chaos

• Radhika Merchant and Anant Ambani are slated to get married on Friday in Mumbai.
• Four Indian event planners shared what it's like to plan a big celebrity wedding.

The wedding of the year is upon us.

After rounds of opulent pre-wedding festivities, Radhika Merchant and Anant Ambani, the youngest son of Asia's richest man, are slated to get married on Friday in Mumbai.

Their guests, who have so far included Bollywood actors, Indian cricketers, and international business leaders, will also attend events on Saturday and a reception on Sunday.

During a pre-wedding event in March, Ambani said his mom worked 18 hours a day for the four months leading up to the parties.

"All this is created by my mother and no one else, and my mother has gone all out for the last four months," Ambani said, per a video of the speech uploaded in March.

Planning such an event takes a village, according to four wedding planners who spoke to Business Insider about what goes into organizing a multi-day Indian celebrity wedding.

The biggest cost is the venue

The planners BI spoke to said a typical multi-day wedding that they plan costs between five to 10 crore Indian Rupees, or about $1.2 million.

Crore is an Indian term for 10 million; 1 crore rupees is around $120,000.

Whether it's a big-ticket wedding like the Ambani's or the wedding of an upper-middle-class family, the breakdown of major costs in an Indian wedding look about the same, one event planner told BI.

About 40% to 50% of the budget goes to the venue, which includes catering and rooms for the guests, said Nishita Aggarwal, the founder of The Event Designer, a Delhi-based wedding planning company.

Next, 25% to 30% of costs go toward decorations, which include elaborate backdrops, tents, and floor-to-ceiling floral arrangements.

About 10% is spent on entertainment. The Ambanis have hired Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, The Backstreet Boys, and Pitbull for pre-wedding functions in recent months.

Other families spend a lot on artists including singers and celebrity DJs, said Purvi Modgil, a destination wedding planner based in Mumbai.

"If you plan to call three or four of them in different core functions, that can also add up to a good cost," she said.

The remaining 10% usually goes into wedding gifts and logistics for the family and guests.

"Now, when it comes to a high-net-worth wedding or a celebrity wedding, everything becomes 10 times or hundred times" of that cost, Aggarwal said. "There is no bar on the budget."

Planners' cost estimates of the Ambani wedding varied widely, from tens of millions of dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Anant's older sister Isha Ambani got married in 2018 in a similarly lavish wedding, including a Beyoncé performance. While media outlets speculated about a $100 million price tag, a spokesperson for the Ambani-owned company, Reliance, said that it cost less than $15 million, per a Forbes article at the time.

A spokesperson for the family did not respond to a request for comment about the costs for Anant Ambani's wedding.

The pre-wedding events have grabbed headlines for months. With so many celebrities and business leaders angling for an invitation, the nuptials are also a business networking event, Aggarwal said.

Each main family member is assigned a 'shadow'

Many couples don't want to host their weddings at venues where other high-profile families have already held nuptials, Aggarwal said.

"They want everything to be exclusive," she said. "The decor has to be something else that no one else has ever thought of. It is almost like a big movie set."

For a big celebrity wedding, planners divide their staff into teams and hire hundreds of additional people leading up to and on the day of the ceremony.

With chefs, waiters, light and audio teams, and decorators, about 500 people often work the event, Modgil said.

The planners also assign butlers to each main family member. These staffers, called "shadows," hold their phones and gifts and ensure they stay hydrated and have everything they need.

"There are over 70 suppliers and vendors who we work with for each wedding," said Darshan Shroff, a Mumbai-based wedding planner. "I like to describe wedding planners in India as circus masters."

Privacy and security are top concerns

Many celebrity or influencer couples are particular about how their wedding is portrayed on the news and on social media.

Planners have strict instructions that restrict posts from vendors about outfits, decor, or flowers before a set date. Most big weddings also collect the phones of their guests for privacy, and couples have teams that work with the media.

"You can't have too many people hanging out taking their pictures. It makes them very uncomfortable," Modgil said about celebrity guests and couples.

Top security firms and even local authorities may sketch out safety plans.

"The minute there are some kind of celebrities, whether it's politicians or Bollywood, security becomes very important," Modgil said. "We've had separate people escorting them and even taking them back because sometimes they even get mobbed."

The families and their guests are not always easy to please.

Aggarwal said she has planned weddings where celebrity attendees call to confirm what type of hotel suite they will be staying in and what kind of car is coming to pick them up. Everything must match their lifestyle standard.

Setting a blueprint for other weddings

The Ambani wedding is already influencing how other Indians are envisioning and planning their own nuptials.

The planners told BI that brides are asking them for the same designers that Radhika Merchant wore in her pre-wedding events, like the custom lehengas designed by Abu Jani Sandeep Khosla and Tarun Tahiliani.

Planners expect the main wedding to leave an even bigger mark.

"Given the immense influence celebrities have, their weddings often become blueprints for future celebrations worldwide," said Bharat Jagasia, a Delhi-based wedding planner.

"For the Ambani wedding, I am particularly excited to see how they differentiate the main event from their pre-wedding functions," he said.

The festivities are slated to kick off Friday at the Jio World Convention Centre, which is owned by the Ambani family. It can accommodate over 16,000 guests.

July 12, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated Nishita Aggarwal's location. She is based in Delhi, not in Mumbai.