Inside Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant’s Final Wedding Celebration in Mumbai

July 12 was the baraat, or, the groom’s wedding procession. Arriving at the Jio World Convention, there were musical performers and hundreds of dancers as Anant arrived on horseback. “It was out of this world. I’ve never seen anything like this,” designer Prabal Gurung, who was one of over 2,000 guests in attendance along with Tony Blair, Nick Jonas, and Priyanka Chopra, says of the baraat. “The whole room was filled with flowers and Bollywood celebrities. There was all this dancing and singing.” (Those flowers were orchestrated by event planner Preston Bailey, who made over 60 floral animal sculptures, made of Indian flowers, including monkeys, elephants, and tigers. He estimated each one took over 100,000 flowers to make. “It took many sleepless nights,” Bailey tells Vogue, who arrived in Mumbai three weeks ago in order to pull it off. Throughout the evening, people lined up to take photos in front of the installations.)

After a short break, it was time for the wedding. The Hindu ceremony began with the traditional jaimala, where Anant and Radhika exchanged garlands symbolizing acceptance of one another. That was followed by the kanyadaan, or, the official moment where Radhika’s parents gave Anant their blessing to marry their daughter. Then came the phera: or, the actual wedding ceremony where the bride and groom take circumambulations around a ritual fire. Radhika describes the act as “somber yet mesmerizing.”

“Each vow encompasses promises of love, fidelity, prosperity, and mutual respect, creating a foundation for our married life,” she says. Afterward came the sindoor daan and mangalsutra ceremonies, where Anant put vermillion in Radhika’s hair and tied a mangalsutra, or sacred necklace, around her neck. “This can be likened to the exchange of rings in a Western wedding,” Radhika explains. “The ceremony concluded with the aashirwad, where we sought blessings from our elders, ensuring their good wishes for our future.”

For this holy moment, Radhika wore a one-of-a-kind couture look by Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla in red and white, honoring the Gujarati tradition of panetar. Her ghagra was adorned with intricate floral motifs along with precious stones and sequins. Upon her head was a six-foot veil that had a delicate jaali pattern and cut-work. (“My veil was a true Zardozi marvel,” says Radhika, referencing the cultural term for gold thread embroidery.)

A wedding portrait of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant.

Photo: Stories by Joseph Radhik

Around her neck, she wore a multi-emerald ranihaar, or bridal necklace. Radhika tells Vogue the piece is a family heirloom: “I wore the same necklace my sister and aunts wore at their weddings, and I truly believe it gave me a special strength and blessing,” she says. The groom, meanwhile, wore Abu Jani Sandeep Khosla.

Then, it was time for the bidaai—or, farewell ceremony for the bride as she leaves her family home to move into her marital home in Indian weddings. “It's considered a bittersweet and sentimental moment that marks the start of the bride's new life as a wife and the end of her role as a daughter,” Radhika explains. She changed into a custom red-and-gold lehenga by Manish Malhotra which featured a blouse from the Indian house’s archive that was over 100 years old. The bride also tells Vogue that her trousseau was a lifetime in the making: “There are looks—dresses and jewelry, which I have planned on with my mom and sister since I was a little girl; I haven’t paid much attention to trends,” she says.

On Saturday, the Ambanis held a pooja to the goddess Saraswati. “For this day I wore my favorite outfit of the whole wedding—a ghagra painted by one of my favorite artists, Jayshree Burman in collaboration with Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla,” says Radhika. “Burman intricately painted an entire world within my ghagra with Lakshmi and Vishnu at the center,” The religious ceremony also attracted plenty of international press attention: India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, attended.

Sunday was the Mangal Utsav: the couple’s wedding reception which was attended by over 14,000 people. Radhika wore a gold filigree corset from Dolce & Gabbana and a constructed saree from Anamika Khanna for the final event of her wedding weekend.

Now that it’s all over, however, Radhika says she has an “overwhelming sense of fulfillment.”

“We’ve been friends and confidants to one another for so long, and now we are finally embarking upon our official journey as a married couple,” she says of her marriage to Anant. “I can’t wait to see what our shared life has in store.”