How Priyanka Chopra won the shaadi power dressing competition
Celebrity weddings just keep getting bigger and bigger, like the budget of Yashraj Films’ pet project, Dhoom, with every sequel. But then, these weddings also keep getting more and more disappointing, again, like Dhoom with every sequel.
So clearly, the pressure was on Priyanka Chopra, just so no one ever comes up with this analogy.
She, by popular demand, needed to be both ‘desi girl’ and ‘exotic.’ And then, since she is Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markel’s nth bestie, how could she not add a dash of royalty to her shaadi?
And finally, Kashibai had to have the last laugh, so what if not in reel, but in real life. The only way PeeCee could do that was by selling her soul to the sartorial god, Ralph Lauren.
That the veil of Priyanka’s wedding gown was longer than Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh’s never-ending extravaganza of a wedding, was not a mere coincidence. It was a well thought-out strategy to eliminate competition and brush all talks of #DeepVeer under the carpet. In this case, the veil.
As per USA Today, the “hand-beaded and hand-embroidered dress from Lauren, featuring a high collar and 135 satin-covered buttons, featuring embroidery took a total of 1,826 hours to complete.” And we haven’t even reached the dramatic veil yet.
Before we do, we need to make a pitstop on the strapless column dress (innerwear?) she wore underneath the dress — made of nearly 2.4 million mother-of-pearl sequins. Mother-of-God! Most of us just wait for a sale in Marks and Spencer.
We are not even nearly done.
The lace on Priyanka’s gown, apart from the blood and sweat of forced labourers (not literally, that would be gory), also had a piece of her mother-in-law's own lace wedding dress, eight words and phrases meaningful to the bride: family, hope, compassion, love, Nicholas Jerry Jonas — ‘cuz looking for pati ka naam on your mehendi is so passé, 1st December 2018 — their wedding date, Madhu and Ashok — the names of Priyanka’s parents, and ‘Om Namah Shivay’! Of course, it was. Elections are coming.
That this encrypted writing acted as a Bat-signal to summon India’s Batman was again not a coincidence. It was another one of PeeCee and team’s well thought-out strategies, and a trump card at that. No, not that Trump.
What Dippy’s ‘sava sau crore’ wedding receptions lacked was the presence of His Arbitrariness, PM Narendra Modi. PeeCee and Nick Ki Shaadi had it. And he obviously had to come, after all he wanted to put India on the world map, and Priyanka helped, even if she did it for apolitical reasons.
And then it also saved him from getting jetlagged, given that the reception happened In My City — Delhi.
Although we’re not sure if his absence from DeepVeer Ki Shaadi was because he is genuinely against Padmavati and Alauddin Khilji coming together, or due to the fact that the invitation didn’t reach him because he was travelling, bacha-bacha of Ramgarh now knows that PeeCee has won this battle.
'May the force be with you.'
Also read: Why the Great Big Celebrity Shaadi is turning into a never-ending Navratri