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.Rest assured, Chopra and Jonas appear to have no hard feelings: They may have so far hidden from the cameras, but they’re in fact among those in attendance themselves.
