No expense spared in Nigerian heir’s wedding

SHE WAS the ecstatic bride at the most lavish wedding of the year.

But Iranian- born model Nazanin Ghaissarifar’s £5 million (R81.9m) nuptials at Blenheim Palace – complete with 1 million white roses – were a world away from her humble life in a Cheshire council house.

Her new husband, entrepreneur and cinematographer Folarin Alakija is heir to a £1.66 billion fortune courtesy of his mother, Nigerian oil tycoon Folorunsho Alakija, 66.

In contrast, the new Mrs Alakija’s mother, Nooshin, 51, was declared bankrupt in 2014 and now lives in a three-bedroom semi in Knutsford.

Her younger brother, Sam, 24, was caught speeding through Macclesfield after taking cocaine while nine times the legal limit for alcohol last year. He was given a six-week suspended jail sentence at Stockport Magistrates’ Court earlier this year.

Nazanin, 28, was born in Iran but has spent at least the past decade living in the UK, studying bioengineering and biomedical engineering at Manchester University.

She went on to feature in an advertising campaign for organic denim brand Monkee Jeans and dated reality TV star Rob Kardashian.

It is thought the family flew hundreds of close friends and relatives from Nigeria to the lavish ceremony in Oxfordshire. It followed a traditional Nigerian wedding in Lagos.

Celebrity US florist Jeff Leatham was charged with decking out Sir Winston Churchill’s ancestral home in Oxfordshire with an estimated £200 000 of orchids and roses. – Daily Mail