Party of the year or a garish display?

Justin Bieber was relegated to warm-up act, a savoury samosa. Drake was rumoured to be the celebrity performance main course-along with Adele.

- ROSIE DIMANNO

The big fat Indian wedding of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant a three-day bash in Mumbai that launched with actually tying the knot Friday - is reported to carry a price tag north of $100 million (US). And $600 million for the whole seven-month-long shebang of festivities that preceded it. Which would still account for a mere 0.5 per cent of the father of the groom's net worth: $120 billion.

Slumdog millionaires are a rupee a dozen these days, 70 of them cranked out a day, according to the World Inequity Database. Two decades ago, India had fewer than 10 billionaires. Now there are some 200 of the modern-day maharajas. Daddy-o Mukesh Ambani is the ninth richest man in the world. He can certainly afford to throw a headlines-grabbing blowout, attracting an uber-A guest list, and transporting them to the lollapalooza on three rented Falcon-2000 jets. Other globe-trotting attendees arrived on their own private planes, some 100 or so aircraft contributing their carbon emissions.

It's distasteful, I say, how boldface performers will prostitute themselves for a sack of lucre. But I suppose you can never have too much do-re-mi. And Drake does need some pocket change after dropping a $300,000 bet he placed on Canada to defeat Argentina in the Copa America semifinal last week, a loss that got him trolled on social media by the victors.