Inside the World’s Most Expensive Wedding Extravaganza

In the past months, we’ve seen some of the most expensive and extravagant weddings featuring breathtaking destinations, jaw-dropping decor, A-list performances and hospitality. These weddings are a feast for the senses with a lavishness that borders on legendary.

The last time India witnessed a wedding on that grand a scale was when the Ambani family hosted one of the most unforgettable wedding extravaganzas. A signature style of the Ambani family, Isha Ambani’s wedding to Anand Piramal set new benchmarks for the Indian wedding market.

When Isha and Anand got married, the estimated cost of the celebration reportedly amounted to ₹830 Crore. It had everything that you could look for in a big-fat-Indian wedding, from couture-clad gatherings to A-list guests to high-profile performances. Even the invitation cards were a talking point.

Akash Ambani had then followed suit with his wedding to Shloka Mehta. While the exact cost of the extravaganza may not be known to the masses, it is safe to say it wasn’t anything less than what the country had already witnessed with Isha Ambani’s wedding. However, the invitation, according to reports, alone cost over a lac, hinting at the glamour of the multi-day affair.

How can one forget the most recent of the Ambani affair, with an estimate of a staggering ₹5,000 crore. Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant’s wedding was one for the books, breaking all their previous records of organising a grand wedding. With a guest list transcending borders and featuring national and global sensations, their wedding’s cost combined with some of history’s most famous weddings, including Princess Diana & Prince Charles (₹1,361 crore) and Sheikha Hind Bint Maktoum (₹1,144 crore). 

With a décor that changed wedding venues to a different universe altogether, one would assume, nothing could ever top the Ambani extravaganza. You are wrong!

World’s Most Expensive Wedding

Even this jaw-dropping festival-like celebration did not make it to the title of “the most expensive wedding on record.” That honour is attributed to Said Gutseriev, the 28-year-old son of a Russian tycoon who married Khadija Uzhakhov in Moscow in the year 2016. You’d wonder what the bill would look like if it surpassed the Ambani family. It amounted to an estimated $1 billion and not a penny less!

The bride had reportedly worn an Elie Saab couture gown that was flown in from Paris, featuring dripping beads and embroidery, which weighed nearly 25 pounds. The gown was reportedly so heavy that the bride required attendants to manage the train and navigate stairs. If reports are to be believed, it cost somewhere between $1 million and 25 million roubles.

And as expected, all the guests arrived in style, in fleets of Rolls-Royce that lined up outside the venue, and for the entertainment, while the Ambani family flew Rihanna in 2024, Gutseriev had Jennifer Lopez delivering an electrifying performance in glamorous outfits to dazzle the ultra-elite crowd in 2016.

These weddings today are not just celebrations of love and union of two people but are an entirely different world in itself, full of spectacles that mark their grandeur into history.