Billion dollar fairy tale wedding
A designer wedding dress far beyond the reach of most brides, but when the groom's father is worth billions you can afford extravagance
THE Moscow wedding of 20-year-old Khadija Uzhakhovs and Said Gutseriev, heir to a Russian oil fortune, took place this past Saturday.
It is still unclear exactly how much the wedding cost, but given that the net worth of Said’s father, Mikhail Gutseriev, is around $6.2 billion, it’s safe to say it cost a fortune. Russian entrepreneur, businessman and poet Gutseriev is the owner of Russneft, NK Neftisa, OAO Russian Coal, ZAO Mospromstroy and also GCM Global Energy, a British company with annual revenue of $1 billion. Gutseriev also owns large assets in real estate’, including the National Hotel and luxury shopping centres such as Petrovskiy,Smolenskiy and Novinskiy Passage.
In 2012, Gutseriev began to invest in the media business, and has acquired seven radio stations thus far.
According to Forbes, he has a personal fortune of $2.4-billion.
The “wedding band” for his son consisted of Jennifer Lopez, Sting and Enrique Iglesias, among others, and there are thousands of Instagram posts from the event.
The £18 000 ($25 000) designer wedding dress is far beyond the reach of most brides, but the jaw-dropping lavish affair, rumoured to have cost up to $1-billion and which took place at the luxury Moscow restaurant and banqueting venue Safisa, which was dripping with fairy lights and decked with wall-to-wall fresh flowers, set a new bar for extravagance.
Jennifer Lopez, who performed her hits If You Had My Love, Dance Again and Get Right, went through several outfit changes, including a black tailored suit and a bejewelled leotard – not to mention a sparkly silver jumpsuit.
She received a generous pay cheque for the performance, as the 46-year-old singer treated herself to some fancy accessories at Moscow store Aizel, which shut down for two hours to allow the star to shop in private, over the weekend.
Enrique Iglesias took to the stage to perform Bailando, casually dressed in jeans, a T-shirt and baseball cap.
Sting also performed and was joined by a group of young girls and women for his song, Desert Rose.
Images from inside the lavish affair swept Instagram, with photographs showing the venue dripping with flowers from floor to ceiling.
