Agencies
Britain's actress-turned beachwear designer Elizabeth Hurley will marry Indian businessman Arun Nayar in February at the 18th century Devigarh Palace in Udaipur, a media report said on Sunday.
The wedding is expected to involve camels and elephants, a series of lavish feasts and an exchange of vows at a specially constructed ‘mandap’ before the newly weds retire to a presidential suite, The Observer claimed.
The wedding guests including Sir Elton John and his partner David Furnish, soccer star David Beckham and his wife Victoria, Pamela Anderson as well as Hurley's ex-boy friend Hugh Grant and his partner Jemima Khan, will be accommodated at suites at nearby Udaipur's famed Lake Palace, the setting for the James Bond movie ‘Octopussy’.
Hurley, 41, who achieved fame in a Versace dress fastened together with safety pins at the 1994 premiere of Four Weddings and a Funeral, recently appeared on the cover of the Italian edition of Vanity Fair and was pictured inside modeling several daring examples of her new bikini designs.
After months of rumours, she finally admitted that she and Nayar, 42, are to marry. "I cannot reveal to you the exact date but it is very close. We are even thinking of having a child," she told the magazine.
The report said the former Estee Lauder model, who has a five-year-old son by Hollywood producer Steve Bing, is planning two weddings and 13 designer gowns. The first, described as a small family affair, is set to take place imminently at Gloucestershire's Grade II-listed Barnsley Hotel close to her home in Ampney Knowle, in London.
The second will be at the Devigarh, a former Maharaja's palace that has established itself as one of the most exclusive boutique hotels in the world.
The hotel offers the last word in opulence – four staff members for every suite, Indian haute cuisine, a traditional Ambassador car and chauffeur at hand for each guest -- yet Hurley is said to be making adjustments.
Not content with the hotel's first class reputation for cuisine, she plans to fly out three specially hired Michelin starred chefs from London to create a series of menus for the wedding.
It said an as yet unnamed magazine will sponsor the event and will foot the bill for seven charter flights from New Delhi and Mumbai to Udaipur to ferry the guests.
It said a pre-wedding party will be held on November 9, again at the Devigarh, where the couple became engaged.
All 39 suites have been hired for 80 of her closest friends and relatives for an event in honour of Hurley's future mother-in-law, the Indian textiles millionaires Gunay Nayar.
A senior manager at the hotel told the newspaper that Gunar stayed in the presidential suite a fortnight ago to make preparations.
Nayar proposed to Liz at the poolside at Devigarh on November 4 last year and since then they have been intent on a wedding there, the report said.
Hurley's agents in Britain and US declined to comment.
According to hotel sources, the wedding ceremony itself will be a traditional Punjabi affair with the turbaned groom arriving on a white horse with the male members of his family on camels and elephants. The report said Gunar is also planning a huge post-wedding celebration in Mumbai for about 5,000 guests.