Newsmaker

Hurley's Indian wedding celebrations in full swing

(AFP)
Updated: 2007-03-08 20:16

JODHPUR, India - Friends and family celebrating the wedding of British model Elizabeth Hurley and her husband Arun Nayar have been partying until four every morning, a guest said Thursday.

British actress Elizabeth Hurley (C) and her son Damian arrive at Jodhpur airport in India's desert state of Rajasthan March 7, 2007. Hurley and her new husband flew into the historic city of Jodhpur on Wednesday, midway though a week of lavish parties that have already run into trouble with Indian authorities. [Retuers]

The ongoing celebrations mark the second marriage ceremony for Hurley, 41, and businessman Nayar, 42, who wed in a civil service last Friday at Sudeley Castle in southwest England, followed by a star-studded party the next day.

The glamorous couple and their guests flew in Wednesday to the northern city of Jodhpur aboard seven jets chartered from India's financial capital Mumbai where they had arrived on Monday for a round of parties.

"We've been partying till four every morning," said celebrity photographer Evelyn Lauder, a member of the family that owns Estee Lauder cosmetics, for which Hurley models, a Times of India report said Thursday.

Television showed Hurley in a strappy sundress with her four-year-old son Damian looking bewildered as the media mobbed them on their arrival after which they were whisked to the exclusive Umaid Bhavan palace hotel.

Fashion designer Tom Ford, formerly of Gucci, British newspaper The Independent's editor-at-large Janet Street-Porter and Hurley's mother and sister are among the guests.

"They're very much in love," Ford told reporters, according to the Times of India report.

With guests trickling in through Wednesday evening, the couple was forced to scrap plans for a musical evening at the ancient Nagaur Fort, a two-hour drive away, a Press Trust of India news agency report said, playing cricket instead.

"Liz Hurley and Nayar played a match (last night). Nayar was bowled out on the first ball," said an Umaid Bhawan palace staff member, asking not to be named.

In spite of the groom's early setback, his team beat the bride's by seven overs, the staff member said.

The teams were divided into men against women -- the Nayar XI vs the Hurley XI -- and were dressed in saffron-coloured outfits, the staff member said.

Wednesday night's events also included a traditional mehndi ceremony, in which henna is applied in intricate designs on the hands of the bride and her female friends, with the bridegroom's name hidden in the pattern on the bride's hands.

The hilltop palace where the couple and their guests are staying was built in 1943 and belongs to Maharaja Gaj Singh, a former Indian ambassador to the United States.

The palace has reserved 72 of its 347 rooms for the celebrity couple and some of their 250 guests.

Dozens of private security guards kept media and uninvited guests a kilometre (half a mile) away from the palace.

Exclusive rights to both the English and the Indian weddings have been sold to Hello! Magazine, the celebrity British publication said, for an amount reported to amply cover the seven-figure cost of their nuptials.

After lunch at the palace on Thursday, the wedding party headed for Nagaur Fort, more than 1,000 years old, where they were to stay the night, returning Friday for an evening Hindu marriage ceremony.

The palace's general manager, Sanjay Uma Shankar, said the marriage ceremony to be performed at the palace would involve a ritual in which the couple walk round a holy fire and are blessed by priests.

Indian designer Tarun Tahiliani is reported to have designed a pink sari for Hurley to wear at the wedding.