Keeping up with the Ambanis: The unconscionable opulence of a $600 million dollar wedding

Unless you have been living under a rock, (and if you have, honestly congratulations), you have likely seen the year-long Ambani wedding all over your social media feeds.

It’s impossible to ignore when the biggest names in the world—in Bollywood, in Hollywood, in reality TV, wrestling, politics and more— coalesce to celebrate the wedding of a multi-billionaire’s son.

The Ambani family has used the wedding as a chance to flex their wealth (over $123 billion USD), by bringing Bad Gal Riri out of retirement for a $9 million dollar performance just for the pre-wedding ceremony, getting Justin Bieber to fly across the world and perform for $10 million (which apparently wasn’t enough for him to wear pants that cover his underwear), and brought celebrities like Kim Kardashian, John Cena, and former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson together in the weirdest collision of various cinematic universes.

The family held another pre-wedding event in Portofino in June, shutting down the surrounding area to tourists while bringing out Andrea Bocelli, Katy Perry, The Backstreet Boys and Pitbull. The event was part of a multi-day, multi-country cruise as part of the pre-wedding festivities, the second pre-wedding bash following a three-day event held in March that reportedly cost $150 million.

Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were among guests at the pre-wedding festivities.

At the wedding itself, the groom, Anant, gifted all of his groomsmen $200,000 Audemars Piguet watches—just a drop in the bucket of the reported $600 million+ the family spent on the nuptials. 

Guests were also given different coloured wristbands to access different parts of the event venue, as if they were attending a music festival and not a wedding.

I won’t act like I haven't been following the wedding—enthralled with the stunning outfits, the grandiose of the event itself, the bizarre guest list, the decor and florals and the stunning celebrities partaking in the festivities.

I know none of us want to pass on an opportunity to thirst over SRK (even if he’s nearly 60), or to watch a Jonas Brother in a sherwani get lost in the chaos of the Ambani Bharat.

I love pop culture, I love fashion, I love all of the glitz and glamour of Indian weddings and I have no shame in my interest in celebrity as a welcome distraction from the chaos of the world. 

But one thing that has gotten lost in the opulence of the Ambani wedding has been a meaningful critique of the grandiose display of wealth, as well as what a billionaire family could gain from publicity of this kind.

Firstly, because I know somebody is going to say it; yes, they can do whatever they wish with their billions (with a B!!!!). 

If they want to spend hundreds of millions on a wedding, sure, I guess. 

But while they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a singular wedding, clearly to flex their wealth and power to the world, it begs the question of what they have to gain from it.

They brought together some of the world's wealthiest people for all of the wedding’s various events and paid ridiculous amounts of money to create a lavish experience and display their fortune while adorned in millions of dollars in jewels and threads. At the same time, millions in India remain in the depths of poverty.

I understand it has been documented that the Ambani family dabbles in charitable work, but if they had chosen to forgo one singular pre wedding festivity and instead redistributed some of that wealth to the communities whose backs they built it off of—they could have made a world of a difference.

Instead, the wedding served as an opportunity for the family to attempt to gain favour with the world, by using the events as a way to ensure that not only will the entire world know who the Ambani family is, but also, that they will hopefully start to admire them for their wealth and status as well as their proximity to famous celebrities and artists.

The Ambanis came to all of the events adorned in emeralds, diamonds and rubies fit for royalty and instead of making us angry that they are able to amass and hoard such wealth at the expense of the millions living in their country, we are supposed to be impressed, to aspire even, to one day be lucky enough to grace such affluent rooms.

Whether intentional or not, the family is trying to manufacture consent for their hordes of wealth and the continuation of their global empire and the only evidence you need of that is one look at the uncritical coverage of the wedding in the media. 

Media around the world was captured by the Indian wedding of the century, the family being treated like royalty for their ability to throw an event of this magnitude.

At the same time, people are jumping at the opportunity to defend the family’s excess while a large portion of India starves. 

The Ambanis are already billionaires and their family will undoubtedly be set up for generations to come, but what they really want and need is to win favour with the public so they can continue their lavish display of wealth unchecked. 

It’s become clear through the year-long festivities that some of the most powerful figures in the world will gladly grovel for this family, showing that capital truly is the most powerful thing there is. 

They brought in social media influencers, including a TikToker called Jewels with Jules whose sole social media personality is dissecting the various expensive jewels worn by mega celebrities. Jules has often featured the Ambani family’s jewels, with each piece often costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

Other influencers and celebrities captured every moment, posting snippets on social media while the event was ongoing—showcasing the decor, extravagant florals, food vendors, performers, and everything in between.

The purpose of having influencers and media documenting the wedding is to only feed the intrigue of those unaware of the Ambanis, only furthering their global reach and benefitting their accumulation of power and wealth. 

The wedding, in essence, was a marketing campaign for the family—as Nita Ambani, the mother of the groom, held hands with the likes of Kim Kardashian, or as the father of the groom, Mukesh welcomed businesspeople like the owner of Samsung, Bill Gates, or world leaders to show what money can truly buy. It was more about the spectacle of the wedding than the  couple themselves, as more people obsessed over the guest list than the pair’s love story.

The Ambanis want to humanize themselves and their wealth so that they are looked at as an isolated, aspirational success story rather than a part of the system that enables their consolidation of power. 

The power and wealth displayed at the wedding events and the celebrities dancing like monkeys for the Ambanis shows who these powerful people truly belong to.

Even India’s Prime Minister made a stop at the wedding festivities, his close relationship with the Ambani’s seemingly normalized, as if a billionaire and a world leader are common friends and not a potential conflict of interest given the Ambani family’s influence on legislation in India. 

The family seemingly accomplished their goal of capturing the attention of the entire world, thus allowing them to redirect the attention to their business pursuits. 

However, I argue that if anything, the family’s desperation to be seen is a sign that although their billions can buy many famous people and many fancy things, it isn’t enough to prevent people from seeing right through their desire for attention and ultimately—for acquiring more wealth.

So while I offer a sincere congratulations to the happy couple, I am holding my breath in eager anticipation of the bar to be yet again raised in the already astronomical Indian wedding industry, while instead of being angry that billionaires are using stolen wealth to entertain other wealthy people, Indians will likely take notes and try to emulate the affair instead of acknowledging how out of touch it all really is.

All that glitters isn’t gold, but evidently—it doesn’t take much for us to be distracted by shiny things.