Gvk Granddaughter Wedding

The big fat Indian wedding gained some more weight on June 11th, thanks to the wedding of Mallika with Sidharth. Mallika is the grand daughter of G V Krishna Reddy, the founder chairman of his eponymous group GVK, one of India's fastest growing infrastructure players in India.

The bride's parents, G V Sanjay Reddy and Aparna Reddy, played their bit to ensure they redefined gala Indian weddings. Spread over three events between June 10th and 12th, guests (according to some estimates over 1000) have been ferried into and out of Hyderabad in charter flights from Mumbai and Delhi for the three-day festivities with the big wedding day on June 11th hosted at the airport arena next to the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport.

Corporate biggies at the wedding included Mukesh Ambani (accompanied by mother Kokilaben, wife Nita Ambani and children), Naresh Goyal, Y C Deveshwar, Chanda Kochhar, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Nimesh Kampani, Kiran Grandhi from GMR Group apart from corporate honchos of Hyderabad led by Dr Reddy's chairman Anji Reddy. There were politicians too like former Mumbai chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, Praful Patel and former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, and of course the dapper Shashi Tharoor and his wife Sunanda.

The three day events, especially the 'Sangeet' prior to the wedding day saw the who's who of Bollywood descend on Hyderabad. They were led by Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra and Rani Mukerjee. At the wedding there were film makers Yash Chopra, Subhash Ghai, Boney Kapoor and yesteryear stars Vyjayanthimala Bali, Jayaprada and Shatrughan Sinha.

The choice of wedding venue - the expansive grounds of the airport arena - was apparently to accommodate the large number of visitors (with total guest list estimated to exceed 6000). Guests and stars were put up at five different five-star hotels in Hyderabad - Novotel, Falaknuma and the three Taj-GVK properties co-owned by the GVK Reddy group- Taj Krishna, Taj Banjara and Taj Deccan on the tony Banjara Hills road. The massive security arrangements at the airport and the wedding venues - Airport Arena (also called the GMR Arena) and HICC (for the reception) have been the talk of the local newspapers.

The decor for the wedding (mostly using colour schemes of red and yellow with digital screens at equal intervals in the arena to highlight every detail of the entire wedding ceremony unfolding on the dais) was conceptualised in all by designer duo Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla. The wedding day decor theme was 'South India.' The food served was based on the theme of 'temples of India' with offerings from different regions of the country known for their temples from Amritsar in the north to Kanchipuram in the south. For those curious to know about Sidharth, he is the son of Syam Prasad Reddy, chairman and managing director of Indu Project, an infrastructure player from Hyderabad.