As we bid farewell to the year 2018, one thing is for sure, if one political front, this year can be termed the “year of accountability”, on social and entertainment front, it can be termed the year of lavish and long weddings, both at home and abroad.
Year 2017 ended with “destination wedding” as Indian cricket star Virat Kohli and Bollywood superstar Anushka Sharma tied the knot while this year ended with the wedding of Isha Ambani, the daughter of India’s richest man.
AMBANI-PIRAMAL WEDDING
The wedding, in Mumbai, and the pre-wedding festivities at a sprawling palace in Udaipur, saw almost the Bollywood stars’ performances and a concert by Beyonce, purportedly the bride’s favourite singer.
Attendees also included Hillary Clinton, former US Secretary of State John Kerry and dozens of Bollywood stars as well as cricket superstar Sachin Tendulkar.
The Ambani-Piramal wedding was India’s most expensive wedding, as according to some estimates as about $100 million were spent in the wedding and pre-wedding celebrations..
Some media reports suggested that it became the second most expensive in the list of top most weddings following the marriage of ceremony of Lady Diana with Prince Charles 37 years ago in 1981.
The biggest highlight of the wedding perhaps was Hillary Clinton dancing to Bollywood tunes along with Indian celebrities like Shahrukh Khan.
The marriage brought together two of India’s richest families as Isha Ambani, 27, is the daughter of Mukesh Ambani, head of the vast Reliance conglomerate whose net worth Forbes put at $43 billion while Anand Piramal, 33, is heir to a real-estate and pharmaceutical business.
CHOPRA-JONAS WEDDING
Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas married on December 1, at the famed Umaid Bhawan Palace in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India.
The wedding marked the tail end of a whirlwind courtship and engagement, with the couple marrying just four months after Jonas reportedly proposed the ‘Quantico’ star in July 2018.
For the occasion, Chopra wore a custom design by Ralph Lauren, who dressed Jonas too, according to People. All three of the groom’s brothers, Kevin, Joe and Frankie, served as groomsmen in the wedding.
The duo reportedly spent more than $800,000 on their wedding festivities, which spanned the whole week.
Chopra, a former Miss World, starred in three seasons of ABC’s “Quantico”, becoming the first Indian to headline a U.S. television drama. In India she is one of Bollywood’s highest paid film stars.
Nick and his brothers Kevin and Joe formed a pop-rock band, The Jonas Brothers, in 2005 and soared to fame as members of Disney’s stable of teenage stars. The band split up in 2013.
DEEP-VEER WEDDING
Bollywood superstars Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh followed in the footsteps of #Virushka and opted for a destination wedding when they tied the knot in Italy on November 14.
The celebrity couple got married in a private ceremony at Lake Como.
The wedding was such a private affair that no media house could get their pictures before the pair released two pictures from the event on November 15.
They showed a smiling Padukone and Singh wearing traditional Indian wedding garb designed by fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee.
The newlyweds published the images on their respective Twitter accounts.
The wedding was a costly affair. As per Indian media, only her engagement ring cost anywhere between Rs 1.3-2.7 crores.
AINEEB WEDDING
In what local media termed a “marathon wedding”, television stars Aiman Khan and Muneeb Butt tied the knot in November.
The pre-wedding festivities started earlier in November while the post-wedding celebrations ended with a reception in December’s first week.
THE ROYAL WEDDING
Britain’s Prince Harry and American actress Meghan Markle were pronounced husband and wife on May 19 by the Archbishop of Canterbury in a glittering union that brought a measure of modern Hollywood glamour into the 1,000-year-old monarchy.
The star of the TV drama “Suits” walked unescorted in a pure white, long-sleeved dress to the middle of the 15th-century St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, where the heir to the throne, Prince Charles, accompanied her towards his son, waiting at the altar.
According to UK wedding site Bridebook, a wedding planning service, the cost of security, including snipers, undercover police and a counter-UAV system, could be about $40.1 million, or 94 percent of the total wedding budget.
Expenses like food and beverage, the dress, flowers and a glass marquee for the reception cost about $2.7 million (£2 million). That was 73 times the cost of the average wedding in the UK.
