NEW DELHI: Guest list: 7,000-people-long. Invitees: The cream
of NRI business community and who's who of Bollywood. Cost: £10
million or Rs 75 crore. These were the makings of a wedding, which
would rival the grandest of them all.
August 31 saw the weekend double wedding at Antwerp, Belgium,
of Vishal and Priya Shah, children of Vijay Shah, one of the biggest
diamond dealers in the world. The wedding set a "new benchmark for
opulence and innovation", said the UK-based Daily
Telegraph.
The paper described Antwerp as having become a Bollywood
fantasy for those few days in end-August. One of the highlights of
the wedding was the designer sets for the ceremony. An entire
exhibition building, Nekkerhal, was transformed into a spectacularly
lit Rajasthani palace, 1,000 feet long, 300 feet wide and 60 feet
tall.
Nitin Desai, the nation's most sought-after film set designer,
was brought in to recreate the architectural splendours of India -
Laxmi Villas Palace in Bikaner, the city palace and Hawa Mahal in
Jaipur, the bathing ghats in Varanasi and the Ajanta and Elora
caves, the paper reported. Desai also erected the marriage
mandaps.
The architectural fibreglass mouldings took 250 workers six
weeks to make at Mumbai's Film City. They were transported to
Antwerp in 47 large containers in two ships, and assembled in
Belgium over 23 days by 87 craftsmen - all flown in from India, the
paper said.
To add to this setting, the paper said, were thousands of yards
of red, gold, yellow, blue and pink silk, and tonnes of flowers
flown in from Bangkok. The food was vegetarian, but guests were
treated to a range of cuisines, including Chinese, Italian, Lebanese
and South Indian. Dozens of cooks, some wearing red Rajasthani
turbans, had been flown in from the top caterers in Mumbai to serve
the delicacies.
The guests included hotshot NRI businessmen -- Srichand and
Gopichand Hinduja, and the steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal. Every guest
was greeted at the airport and assigned personal limousines to ferry
them around, the newspaper said.
The high points of the festivities surrounding the wedding
included an appearance - on a motorcycle - by film star Akshay
Kumar, and Bollywood's chart-basting music, brought live by
Abhijeet, Shankar Mahadevan, Shaan and Sunidhi Chauhan. Even
internationally renowned groups like Vengaboys and Stereo Nation
attended the shindig.
Fashion designers Rohit Bal and Manish Malhotra dressed the
family members. Malhotra co-ordinated a fashion show for the guests
as well. The newly weds' going-away outfits were by Abu
Chani-Sandeep Khosla duo, who had made an Oscar ceremony gown for
renowned actress Judi Dench, the paper said.
The reason behind Shah's extravaganza was simple. "I am doing
it for my children," The Daily Telegraph quoted him as
saying.
