Around 800 guests at Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant’s wedding celebrations will enjoy an opulent adventure aboard a luxury Mediterranean cruise between May 28 and 30, and Barcelona has been chosen as the departure point for some guests.
Despite the secrecy surrounding the link, the mobilization this Monday of almost fifteen private flights – highlighting a Boeing 747-400F from Atlas Air and an Airbus A340-300 from Air X Charter – from Bombay showed that a new Indian wedding is visiting the city after that of Lakshmi Mittal’s niece in 2013 and another that was held in the modernist Sant Pau venue in 2022.
The hosts of this link are the same Indian couple who surprised the world last March with a luxurious pre-wedding party in Jamnagar, which was a demonstration of power and wealth. Rihanna, Bill Gates, Ivanka Trump and Mark Zuckerberg attended among leaders, Bollywood celebrities and cricket players.
The groom is the son of engineer and businessman Mukesh Ambani, president of the mega-company Reliance Industries and one of the richest men in the country, and she is the daughter of fellow tycoon Viren Merchant.
The route that the ship is expected to take, according to Hindustan Times, includes Cannes, Portofino and Rome, but Barcelona did not appear as one of the stops that the aforementioned publication revealed from the beginning. When asked by this newspaper, the organizers of the other Indian weddings that years ago surprised Barcelona with exoticism and luxury also have no news that the event will have a celebration in the city.
On board the cruise there are daytime activities planned, theme parties, costume parties and also excursions for sightseeing in the ports where they dock. One of the few planned activities that has transcended the celebration has been a themed party set in the space that will have the starry sky of the Mediterranean as a backdrop. Keeping with the space theme, Radhika is expected to look like a galactic princess, since one of hers has been made by Grace Ling Couture and is a piece carved from aerospace aluminum.
Among other amenities included in the experience that the couple has organized, up to 600 employees have been mobilized who will be in charge of serving the guests. At their pre-wedding in March, the couple not only offered charter flights and private vehicles, they also hired makeup artists, mixologists, chefs, and performances by artists like Rihanna herself, Akon, and Diljit Dosanjh.
Indian weddings usually include several events and this cruise will not be the grand finale of the celebrations either, as the Indian media reports that the official wedding will take place from July 10 to 12 in Bombay, where the couple lives. That date was determined by the Hindu tradition of getting married on a day of good omen based on the natal charts of the spouses.
