Gates, Zuck, Trump: the Ambani prewedding proves conspicuous consumption is back, baby!
They say money can’t buy you love, but it can certainly buy you one hell of a pre-wedding. The world’s one percenters are currently nursing their hangovers after three ostentatious days in India spent celebrating the upcoming nuptials of Anant Ambani, the youngest son of Asia’s richest man.
The event, which reportedly cost $120m, was an ode to excess: there was a nine-page dress code, a private concert by Rihanna, and a feast which even Nero might have thought a little over the top.
Twenty-one chefs prepared “75 types of dishes for breakfast, more than 225 types of dishes for lunch, 275 types of dishes for dinner, and 85 types of items … [for] the midnight meal”, explained the Times of India. The idea being that none of the guests – who included the likes of Mark Zuckerberg,
Ivanka Trump and Bill Gates – would have to suffer the indignity of eating the same food twice.
Obscenely rich people doing outrageously expensive things isn’t exactly unusual. And nobody would expect the son of a billionaire to have a backyard wedding with a homemade cake and a thrifted dress. But what’s remarkable about the Ambanipre-wedding celebration (the actual wedding isn’t until July) is how unashamedly flashy it was. Indeed, it was so over-the-top that even the Daily Mail, not exactly known for its lefty leanings, wrote a horrified piece noting that the extravagant celebrations took place “just yards from where some of the poorest people on earth eke out a living”.
The juxtaposition of multimilliondollar feasts and Gujarati slums wasn’t