Isha-Anand wedding: Mukesh wooed Nita Ambani at Piramals’ house, and other details you may not know
It was Mukesh’s advice that helped Anand make his career choices.
This is the season of starry weddings, and our social media timelines have been flooded with celebrities dressed up for their special day.
On November 27, it was the turn of Isha Ambani to dazzle us at a pre-wedding function.
The daughter of Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, Isha for her ‘graha shanti puja’, chose a Sabyasachi Mukherjee outfit — a “hand-painted, hand-embroidered tilla-work lehenga and antique bandhej dupatta”, accessorised with a “necklace and earring set featuring uncut Syndicate diamonds and Zambian emeralds.”
While the details mostly just mean “big money” to us lesser morals, Isha does look beautiful.
Around 10 days ago, the Ambanis had begun the Isha-Anand Piramal pre-wedding functions with a dandiya night. Both the bride and her mother, Nita Ambani, wore Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla at the do.
Isha Ambani got engaged to Anand Piramal in a grand ceremony at Lake Como, Italy, held over three days from September 21 to 23.
Isha Ambani is on the boards of Reliance Jio and Reliance Retail. She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and South Asian Studies from Yale University, and finished her MBA from the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, in June this year.
Anand Piramal holds a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and a masters in business administration (MBA) from Harvard Business School. The son of Ajay Piramal of the Piramal Group, Anand founded Piramal Realty in 2012.
The two have known each other since they were children — the Ambanis and the Piramals are old family friends.
In fact, it is said that Mukesh Ambani’s advice helped Anand decide whether he wanted to become an entrepreneur or a consultant. “Being an entrepreneur is like playing cricket and being a consultant like watching it as a commentator… In the long run, if you want to play the game, grab the opportunity without wasting time,” Ambani told him.
But the ties go deeper than that. Not many know that it was at the Piramals’ house that Mukesh Ambani wooed Isha’s mother, Nita, who was then known as Nayantara Dalal.
Anand’s mother, Swati Piramal, had said at an event a few years ago: “Every day she [Nita] would come back from a drive with Mukesh and we would wait for her. And Ajay [Piramal] would ask her, did he hold your hand today? So we saw the first of the romance.”
Decades later, Anand proposed to Isha at a temple in Mahabaleshwar, and in true Bollywood style, the two families are set to convert their dosti into rishtedari.
Every new detail of this wedding — set for December 12 — is understandably making waves, and a few days ago, the wedding card, which cost a reported Rs 3 lakh, was all the rage on social media.
According to a report, the wedding card video thanks the couple’s grandparents, and their grandmothers have been represented with flowers — “The Lotus is dedicated to Kokila Mummy, the Hibiscus to Purnima Nani, the rose to Lalita Dadi and Frangipani to Arunika Nani.”
Ever since the engagement, the Ambanis have been on a round of temples — the wedding card was first presented to Lord Ganesha at the Siddhivinayak temple in Mumbai. The family has since visited the ISKCON temple in Mumbai, the Rameshwaram temple in Tamil Nadu and the Tirupati temple in Andhra Pradesh.
The year 2018 seems to be the wedding year for the Ambanis. In June, Isha’s twin, Akash, got engaged to Shloka Mehta, the daughter of diamantaire Russel Mehta.
At Akash’s engagement party were revealed the details of the third Ambani sibling Anant’s relationship, when host Shah Rukh Khan teased him about Radhika Merchant. Radhika is the daughter of Viren Merchant, CEO and vice-chairman of Anchor Healthcare.