You bet I do! Tycoon shells out $60 million for daughter's wed
By Max Heuer
Sunday, June 27, 2004
Talk about taking the Daddy Warbucks schtick to another level.
Indian-born British gazillionaire Lakshmi Mittal laid out a whopping 60 million big ones to give away his 23-year-old princess, Vanisha, in Paris last week.
A night in the Tuileries garden, another at a gallery at Versailles and a private Kylie Minogue concert all culminated with a lavish ceremony at a 17th century chateau outside Paris.
Mittal also had a makeshift castle built at a park in Saint-Cloud, outside the capital, according to the magazine Paris Match.
Vanisha and the lucky guy, 25-year-old banker Amit Bhatia, traveled in a silver Rolls-Royce, the London Times reported.
The biggest stars of Bollywood (India's Hollywood) went through some 6,000 meals, 5,000 bottles of Mouton-Rothschild 1986 and veggie-specialties prepared by celebrity chef Munna Maharaj.
The wedding was widely reported in France as likely the most expensive in European history, the Times said.
Makeup artists, hairstylists and saree-draping specialists occupied the entire first floor of the Salon Ravel at Hotel le Grand Intercontinental to assist the 1,500 guests who attended the six-day event, the Delhi Times reported.
Mittal - who heads LNM Group, the world's second largest steel producer - is estimated to be worth $4.6 billion.
The $60 million price tag was about the cost of an Airbus A320 passenger jet.
The wedding's cost was nearly double that of a recent royal wedding in Spain. Paris Match said the nuptials of Spain's Crown Prince Felipe to TV anchorwoman Letizia Ortiz cost a mere $35 million. |
