New Delhi: India is the land of big-fat weddings. Getting married is a once in a lifetime event for most of the Indians, thus people here leave no stone unturned to make their D-Day most memorable.
Parents spend lavishly on their children’s wedding to make it extra special. We have seen several extravagant weddings in the past which made us go ‘wow’.
The latest to join this list of lavish weddings is Kerala’s NRI businessman Ravi Pillai. He spent a whooping Rs 55 crore in his daughter’s wedding that took place in Kerala yesterday, November 26.
Pillai married off his daughter Dr Arathi to Dr Adithya Vishnu of Kochi, in the presence of around 30,000 guests.
The week-long gala wedding event took place at the popular Asramam ground in Kollam.
The Extravagance
The festivities of the extravaganza was organized by the production designer of SS Rajamouli’s magnum opus movie Baahubali.
Under his guidance, a team of 200 people built a grand wedding set inspired from the Royal palaces of Rajasthan. It took 40 days for the workers to prepare it with an investment of Rs 20 crore.
It was bigger than the one used in the blockbuster movie, to be precise, the wedding mandap was 350,000 sq ft spread across eight acres.
Guest list
Talking about the guest list, this lavish wedding was attended by CEOs of Japan Gas Corporation, members of Royal families from Kuwait, UAE ,Middle East, Qatar etc.
Kerala Chief minister Oommen Chandi, and movie stars Mohanlal and Mammootty also graced the occasion with their presence.
Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Bahrain’s Royal family were flown in via chartered planes to the wedding venue on Wednesday.
Performances
The guests were entertained by the top performers at the event. Singer Gayathari started the festivities with the bhajans followed by an elegant kuchupudi performance by Manju Warriors.
Thereon, Shobhna spilled magic with Bharatanatyam performance which was carry forward by Stephen Devassay through a musical treat.
This one of a kind event had high profile security arrangements as well. 250 cops plus 350 privately hired security men guarded the dignitaries.
The highlighting point of this multi-crore wedding is that Mr. Pillai donated Rs 10 crore for the cancer patients during the festivities.