Who is Isha Ambani, the Ultrawealthy Bride Whose Indian Wedding Includes Hillary Clinton and a Beyoncé Performance?
It’s hard to imagine that a wedding could be more hyped or over-the-top than that of Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas—a three-day long extravaganza whose guests included Joe Jonas, Sophie Turner, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson—but barely a week later in India, Isha Ambani, a 27-year-old heiress, and her fiancé Anand Piramal, the 33-year-old founder of Piramal Realty, have already done just that. (Though not exactly surprisingly so, given that Ambani’s father, Mukesh Ambani, is the wealthiest person in India; currently the Reliance Industries conglomerate’s chairman, his net worth is valued at $47.3 billion.)
It’s only in the pre-party stage, but the festivities have already included a private concert by Beyoncé, who brought along her mom, Tina Knowles, and her husband, Richard Lawson. And that’s not all: There are so many pre-wedding festivities set to follow that to help their guests keep track of the schedule, the bride and groom created a custom app.
Naturally, then, the Knowles have only made up a ultrateeny portion of those who began to arrive in Udaipur, India, over the weekend; there were so many, in fact, that traffic at the city’s airport quadrupled on Saturday, in advance of the main ceremony this Wednesday at the Ambanis’ residence in Mumbai. Of course, there’s no better motivation for guests to get a head start than the prospect of a private concert from Beyoncé; it wasn’t long before Hillary Clinton, a longtime friend of the Ambanis, joined her, keeping company with Arianna Huffington, British businessman Martin Sorrell, newlyweds Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh, and the so-called King of Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan.
The festivities, which have adopted a moniker of their own—”the big, fat Indian wedding”—have so far taken place at the 16th-century City Palace overlooking Lake Pichola in Udaipur. Seeing as Ambani celebrated getting engaged to Piramal this fall by inviting 600-plus guests to join the couple in Lake Como for no less than three days of festivities, which included a private concert by John Legend, Beyoncé is no doubt only the beginning of what’s to come.
After all, while it may not come close to her father’s nearly $50 billion, Isha Ambani has already built up an impressive net worth of her own: an estimated $115 million, thanks to her own forays into business. Born in Maharashtra, she headed to the States to study at Yale, earning a degree in psychology and South Asian studies in 2013, before making her way to New York to work at the management consulting firm McKinsey. Early on, her hard work paid off: by the time she was in her early twenties, she was a regular on rankings of Asia’s top up-and-coming businesswomen. And, by her mid-twenties, she’d joined the boards of Reliance Industries, the largest private sector company in India which she’ll one day inherit.
While she considers growing Reliance to be her “dharma,” Ambani has also made an effort to stand on her own, branching out from oil and telecom into fashion retail by overseeing the launch of the retailer AJIO in 2016. Seeing as she’s also fond of wearing Valentino and custom Dior, it’s only natural that Vogue enlisted her to speak at their tech summit in Sydney last year, when she was all of 25. (Ahead of her appearance, she spoke with Vogue Australia about her hopes to inspire “more women to join the workforce” in India, and the pressure that comes with being born into the country’s wealthiest family; as she put it at the time, “People are watching you and waiting for you to fail. I feel like I have to work twice as hard in order to dispel the stereotypes associated with working for your dad.”)
Lately, though, she appears to have dedicated a significant amount of her ambition to wedding planning. All in all, the festivities will reportedly add up to around $100 million—or just $10 million shy of the equivalent that Prince Charles and Princess Diana spent to mark their own marriage in 1981. (Ambani’s fiancé is, of course, also no stranger to wealth: he’s currently at no. 22 on Forbes’s 2018 list of billionaires in India, with a net worth of $4.6 billion.)
Considering that Chopra and Jonas are each worth a paltry $25 million or so in comparison, though, they certainly held up in terms of competition. Rest assured that the couple appears to have no hard feelings, either: They may have so far hidden from the cameras, but they’re in fact among those in attendance themselves.
Related: Priyanka Chopra’s First Wedding Gift Is Worth a Small Fortune
All of the Celebrities Who Have Gotten Married In 2018 (So Far)
Henry Holland, the slogan tee extraordinaire and designer behind House of Holland, capped off his 2018 by marrying David Hodgson, the creative director of Lulu Guinness, at Old Marylebone Town Hall in London, where Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Melanie Griffith, and Liam Gallagher have all previously exchanged vows.
A few years after they costarred on ABC’s Revenge, Emily VanCamp and Josh Bowman headed to the Bahamas to make like their on-screen characters and tie the knot.
The 28-year-old actor Grant Gustin—aka the Flash—married the 30-year-old physical therapist Andrea “LA” Thoma midway through December in Los Angeles. While they kept their symbolic Kadazan ceremony the held last year to honor of Thoma’s ancestors low-key, this time, they invited an actor-filled crowd to the proceedings, including Melissa Benoist and Daveed Diggs.
Having declined Donald Trump’s offer to use the White House as their wedding venue, following their engagement last year, Morning Joe cohosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski instead held their ceremony in close proximity to the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution at the National Archives. Both were married when they began their tenure at MSNBC in 2007, and both were divorced about five years later, at which point they discreetly began dating. (They purposely chose just two days after Thanksgiving to get married, hoping for some privacy while people were out of town.)
Mandy Moore and her new husband, Taylor Goldsmith, married on November 18th, 2018. Photo courtesy of Instagram @mandymooremm.
Carlos Torretta and Marta Ortega were married on Friday, November 17th, 2018, in Ortega’s hometown of A Coruña, Spain. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
“Okay, so we went and did it. And damn are we happy,” the 62-year-old comedian and former Full House star posted on Instagram in late October to announce that, following their engagement last November, he and 39-year-old Eat Travel Rock host Kelly Rizzo had gotten married. (Among those who attended the wedding were John Mayer—even though it meant delaying his Instagram live show by three hours.)
Princess Ayako of Takamodo turned away from her royal status to marry Kei Moriya, a commoner who works for a major Japanese shipping company. Per the Imperial House of Japan’s rules, women who marry non royals must forfeit their place in the royal family. Princess Ayako married Moriya at Meiji Shrine in Tokyo on October 29, 2018.
Barely a week had passed after Princess Eugenie’s nuptials when yet another royal wedding came along, thanks to Duchess Sophie of Württemberg and the French aristocrat Count Maximilien of Andigné, who tied the knot at the Castle of Tegernsee in Germany, near the Bavarian Alps.
And, just a week after attending Princess Eugenie’s wedding, the 32-year-old Bloomingdale’s heiress Hayley Bloomingdale hosted her own, marking her union to the lighting designer Dada Stileman. She wore an apparently beach-friendly gown by Carolina Herrera for the ceremony, which took place in Santa Barbara.
The ever-subtle couple Karlie Kloss and Joshua Kushner took their six-year relationship to another level in October with a surprise small ceremony in upstate New York. The newlyweds may not share the political views of Joshua’s brother, presidential adviser Jared Kushner, but whether Kloss likes it or not, their union means that she’s now officially related to the Trumps. (Ivanka, for her part, is thrilled: She proclaimed Kloss to be her “sister” following the news of their engagement over the summer.)
The stylist (and former W fashion director) Joe Zee also headed upstate this October to get hitched, bringing his new husband, the designer Rob Younkers, along with him, of course. Julianne Moore attended the ceremony, which was followed by some rustic festivities that started off with appetizers served atop nails affixed to planks of wood.
For the Royal Wedding 2.0, royals and a surprisingly hefty number of celebrities returned to St. George’s Chapel in Windsor this October to witness the union of Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank.
Just before September came to a close, Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Falchuk headed to the Hamptons to officially tie the knot in front of guests like Robert Downey Jr., Cameron Diaz, Benji Madden, and Steven Spielberg.
Despite the “miserable British weather,” as he later put it on Instagram, Lord Ivar Mountbatten married his partner, James Coyle, at the end of September in a small ceremony, which saw the latter’s ex-wife walk him down the aisle. Seeing as Lord Ivar is the Queen’s third cousin once removed, their union marked the first gay royal wedding, temporarily stealing the show from even Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.
Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte and model Kayla Rae Reid, who met on Instagram, actually wed back in January. Seeing as that ceremony was secret, this September, they decided to do it all over again, this time at a ranch in Palm Springs.
The Blonde Salad’s Chiara Ferragni married Italian rapper Fedez on Saturday, September 1, 2018, in Italy, after a weekend of elaborate events. For the actual ceremony, Ferragni wore Dior Haute Couture, and the house’s creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri was reportedly in attendance. She changed into a more playful gown after the ceremony, and shared a closer look at both ensembles on Instagram.
Vincent Cassel, 52, headed to a city hall in southwestern France to marry the 21-year-old model Tina Kunakey. They’ve already landed a magazine cover together, and Cassel has already addressed their age difference by declaring, “I’m very much in love and sure we are going to make babies.”
The Danish model Caroline Brasch Nielsen and her now husband Frederik Bille Brahe, a chef, took over the canals of Copenhagen for a day in August for a ceremony complete with sunflowers and their pet border collie.
The model Emily DiDonato headed for the mountains of Colorado to marry the financier Kyle Peterson, just four years after they met by sitting next to each other on a plane DiDonato had boarded for an Australian Vogue cover shoot.
Tauheed Epps, aka 2 Chainz, and Kesha Ward—seen here with their three children, Heaven, Harmony, and Halo—took over the ridiculously over-the-top Versace Mansion for a ceremony that drew the likes of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, the latter of whom caused a scene when he showed up wearing socks and sandals.
Before heading off to honeymoon in Spain, House of Cards star Robin Wright—who divorced Sean Penn in 2010—quietly married her Clement Giraudet, the head of VIP relations at Saint Laurent, in a quiet, largely social media-free wedding in France.
Seven years after meeting him at a club in Paris, the stylist and creative director Lolita Jacobs married Jean-Baptiste Talbourdet-Napoleone in Saint-Tropez, wearing a dress casually designed by her old pal Simon Porte Jacquemus.
Actress Hilary Swank and social venture entrepreneur Philip Schneider opted for a Burning Man-themed ceremony in the Redwoods this August, which included a silent disco.
Erin Wasson and her pals, who all just so happened to wear pink, took over Austin on the day that the model wed her partner of two years, the restaurateur Bart Tassy, in some very ruffly Vivienne Westwood.
Actress and eternal Chanel muse Vanessa Paradis tucked her ex Johnny Depp a bit further away into her past when she married the director Samuel Benchetrit in a small ceremony outside of Paris at the end of June. Their union turns out to have brought about one for her daughter Lily-Rose Depp and Benchetrit’s son Jules Benchetrit, who’s pretty much the Timothée Chalamet of France, too.
Terrence Thornton, aka Pusha T, married his partner of 11 years, Virginia Williams, in their hometown of Virginia Beach. The ceremony also happened to mark Dior Homme newbie Kim Jones‘s first foray into bridal design.
In case you didn’t know that her new husband, Karl Cook, is an equestrian, he and the actress Kaley Cuoco took care to hold their wedding at a horse stable in San Diego and wed beneath a giant feathered and floral horseshoe. (They also invited miniature ponies to join in on the festivities.)
Model and artist Myla Dalbesio painstakingly tracked down a lavender wedding dress just like her late mother’s to marry Nathan Hageman at a ceremony on the beach in Tulum.
Before she put her hair in a ponytail and switched into her cozier Tadashi Shoji jumpsuit to celebrate, Cuoco wore a lacy Reem Acra gown and cape to marry Cook.
