Privacy is the new gold standard. In the age of 4K smartphone cameras and parasocial thirst, keeping a secret is the ultimate luxury. So, naturally, the internet has spent the last month trying to hack the private lives of Rashmika Mandanna and Vijay Deverakonda. The rumor mill says they’re finally tying the knot. The location? Udaipur. Because of course it is.

Udaipur is the final boss of Indian destination weddings. It’s where you go when you want to look like royalty without actually having to deal with the inconveniences of the 19th century, like smallpox or lack of air conditioning. But for two of South Cinema’s biggest exports, a "royal" wedding isn't just a romantic gesture. It’s a massive logistical deployment. It’s a production. And the bill is going to be astronomical.

Let’s talk numbers. If you’re looking at a venue like the Oberoi Udaivilas or the Taj Lake Palace—the usual suspects for this kind of high-stakes nuptial—you aren't just booking a room. You’re buying a fortress. To shut down a premier Udaipur property for a weekend, you’re looking at a starting price of roughly ₹1.5 crore to ₹2 crore ($180,000 to $240,000) per night. That’s just for the keys. That doesn't include the marigolds, the imported booze, or the fleet of Audi A8s waiting at the airport to ferry influencers who will inevitably "leak" the decor on their Instagram stories.

For a three-day affair, the baseline is ₹5 crore. Minimum. That’s before the couple starts adding the "celebrity tax."

What’s a celebrity tax? It’s the cost of keeping the world out. When you’re Rashmika and Vijay, your guest list is a security liability. You need specialized firms to handle NDA enforcement. You need drone-jamming tech to ensure some teenager with a DJI Mini 3 Pro doesn't get a grainy shot of the phera ceremony from three miles away. You need privacy screens that look like high-end architecture but function like riot shields.

Then there’s the friction of the location itself. Udaipur is beautiful, sure, but it’s a nightmare for a tech-heavy production. The narrow lanes of the old city weren't designed for vanity vans or massive lighting rigs. Moving a crew of 400 people across a lake to a palace involves a level of coordination that would make a military general sweat. You’re paying for the "heritage" aesthetic, but you’re also paying for the sheer difficulty of making modern luxury exist in the middle of a lake.

The trade-off is simple: You spend more on the venue so you can spend less on PR. In a world where every celebrity moment is monetized, a closed-door Udaipur wedding is a controlled environment. It allows the couple to sell the "official" photos to a streaming giant or a glossy magazine without the value being diluted by a blurry TikTok from a distant cousin. It’s a high-capital investment in their own brand equity.

We’ve seen this script before. From Parineeti Chopra to Kiara Advani, the "Royal Rajasthan" template has become the standard UI for celebrity weddings. It’s predictable. It’s expensive. It’s designed to be photographed. Every archway is a pre-lit set; every courtyard is a stage.

Is it actually romantic? Maybe. But at this scale, romance is a secondary feature. The primary function of a ₹10 crore Udaipur wedding is to signal status in a way that can’t be faked. It’s about the exclusivity of the space and the height of the walls. It’s about ensuring that for seventy-two hours, the two most-watched people in India can exist in a bubble that costs more than most people’s lifetime earnings.

In the end, the price of a royal Udaipur venue isn't really about the marble or the silk curtains. It’s about the silence. It’s about the ability to turn off the noise of a billion people for a few days.

But as the NDAs are signed and the drone jammers are powered up, you have to wonder: if a celebrity gets married in a palace and no one is allowed to post a selfie, did it even happen? Or is the high-priced secrecy just another way to make us want to look even harder?