If you’ve spent any time on social media over the past couple of years, you’ve almost certainly stumbled across clips of over-the-top Ambani family celebrations, from massive pre-wedding performances to star-studded guest lists that draw names from every corner of the globe. It’s hard to scroll past these moments without pausing, especially when you see A-list names you’d never expect to see at the same event. If you’ve found yourself asking when was the Anant Ambani wedding, you’re not alone — this event was one of the most searched cultural moments of the year, with millions of people looking for accurate details beyond the viral TikTok snippets.
When Was the Anant Ambani Wedding, and What Led Up to the Big Day?
Anant Ambani, the youngest son of Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, married long-time partner Radhika Merchant in a multi-day event that combined traditional Gujarati Hindu rituals with global celebrity appeal. The official wedding ceremonies took place across three days from July 12 to 14, 2024, at the Ambani family’s private residential complex in Mumbai, India. Pre-wedding celebrations spanned three full days months earlier, from March 1 to 3, 2024, in the city of Jamnagar in Gujarat, where Reliance operates one of its largest oil refinery complexes.
The pre-wedding events were far more public than the official wedding, as the family chose to open a large portion of the celebrations to local residents and global media. The couple had been dating for more than 10 years before their engagement in 2023, and they intentionally kept most of their relationship out of the public eye leading up to the wedding announcement. That’s part of why the event drew so much global attention — it was the first time many people got an official look at the couple’s dynamic.
You don’t have to be a follower of Indian celebrity culture to have seen clips from the Jamnagar events. Footage of global pop stars performing, elaborate parades, and community feasts circulated across every major social platform for weeks after the pre-wedding wrapped. Many people who saw those clips didn’t realize they were pre-wedding events, not the actual wedding, which is part of why there’s so much confusion around the exact date of the official ceremony.
Standout Moments From the Full Wedding Celebration Cycle
The wedding events were designed to honor both the couple’s personal preferences and their cultural roots, with a mix of private family rituals and larger public celebrations. One of the most talked about elements was the baraat, the traditional grooms’ procession, which featured more than 200 folk dancers, live drum lines, and a procession route that wound through the streets of South Mumbai for nearly two hours. Rihanna’s private performance at the pre-wedding was one of the most viral moments of the entire cycle, with short clips of her set racking up more than 3.2 billion views across TikTok and Instagram in the first week after the event.
The guest list for the full celebration cycle was one of the most eclectic ever assembled for a private event, with names from every industry and region of the world. Some of the most notable attendees included:
- Global pop stars and Hollywood personalities including Zendaya, Tom Holland, Rihanna, and Leonardo DiCaprio
- Top Indian and international sports stars like Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Novak Djokovic
- Heads of state and political leaders from 18 different countries across South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East
- More than 2,000 local artists and community members from Jamnagar who were invited as honored guests
Unlike many high-profile celebrity events, very few official photos were released from the private July wedding ceremonies. The wedding had a strict no-phone policy for most private ceremonies to protect the couple’s privacy, so most of the clips you see online are from the public pre-wedding events in Jamnagar. The couple did release a small set of official wedding photos a week after the ceremony, showing them in traditional red and gold wedding attire surrounded by immediate family.
What Made This Wedding Different From Other High-Profile Celebrity Events
Most lavish celebrity weddings are closed-off, elite events that only benefit the people in attendance, but the Ambani family took a different approach with Anant and Radhika’s celebration. The family donated more than $70 million to local Jamnagar community initiatives ahead of the pre-wedding events, including funding for 10 new local health clinics, upgrades to 25 local schools, and expanded resources for the Jamnagar animal rescue shelter that Anant Ambani runs. Sustainability was a core focus of every event element, from 100% biodegradable decor to zero-waste catering that donated all leftover food to local food banks.
Another unexpected choice was the decision to invite more than 50,000 local Jamnagar residents to the pre-wedding feasts, separate from the celebrity guest list. Local attendees got to enjoy the same food and live performances as the A-list guests, and many shared their own experiences of the event on social media. That choice was a big departure from typical high-society weddings, where local communities are often kept far away from the event space.
The couple also chose to prioritize traditional regional art forms over trendy international entertainment for most of the ceremony elements. More than 2,500 local folk artists from across Gujarat were hired to perform at different points across the pre-wedding and wedding events, giving many of them their first ever global platform. Clips of these performances went viral across India, leading to a huge surge in bookings for many of the artist groups in the months after the wedding.
Common Misconceptions About the Anant Ambani Wedding
With any viral global event, there’s bound to be a lot of false information circulating online, and this wedding is no exception. One of the most common myths is that the wedding cost more than $1 billion total. Official estimates from the family’s team put the total cost at around $150 million, and more than half of that budget went to the charitable donations and community initiatives we mentioned earlier, not just luxury decor or performances.
Another common myth is that the event was all a publicity stunt for Reliance Industries. Anant and Radhika have kept their relationship completely private for more than a decade, and they only agreed to have public elements to the wedding because they wanted to use the attention to raise funds for the animal welfare and community development causes they both care about. They turned down multiple 8-figure offers from media outlets for exclusive access to the private wedding ceremonies, which you wouldn’t expect if the goal was purely publicity.
Many people also assume that the entire event was focused on Western celebrity guests, but that’s not the case. More than 80% of the invited guests were Indian community leaders, artists, family friends, and business partners, with Western celebrities making up only a small portion of the total guest list. Most of the media coverage focused on the Western guests because they draw more global clicks, but they were far from the main focus of the event.
If you were curious about when was the Anant Ambani wedding, you now know the official ceremonies took place in mid-July 2024, with the widely seen pre-wedding events happening a few months earlier in March. It’s easy to write off the event as just another over-the-top celebrity wedding, but it’s far more meaningful than that for a lot of people. It put traditional Indian wedding rituals on a global stage, directed millions of dollars to community causes that would have otherwise gone unnoticed, and gave hundreds of small artists a life-changing career boost. The next time you see a clip from the event pop up on your feed, you’ll know the full story behind it.