Move over Pippa ... it’s the £5m Blenheim Palace wedding with 12ft cake, surprise pop star performance and a MILLION roses
IT’S always nice to say it with flowers. But when this groom ordered an astonishing one million white roses for his wedding, the message was more than clear: I’m not short of a few quid.
And indeed he isn’t – for Folarin Alakija’s mother is a Nigerian oil tycoon and one of the richest women in the world.
In the most extravagant wedding since Pippa Middleton got hitched to James Matthews, Mr Alakija – a former London geography student – splashed out an estimated £5million marking his big day at Blenheim Palace.
As well as the roses, his new wife – Iranian model Nazanin Ghaissarifar – was treated to a 12ft-high eight-tier wedding cake and a surprise performance by Blurred Lines pop star Robin Thicke (who normally charges £150,000 for such a gig).
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. Guests were treated to a fivecourse menu, including foie gras, beef and sole and there was also a spectacular fireworks display.
Mr Alakija, who is in his late 0s, studied at entrepreneurImperial College,and cinematographer,London and is an while his new wife studied bioengineering and biomedical engineering at the University of Manchester. She also has a law diploma. It is believed they met through friends in London.
The new Mrs Alakija, who used to date Rob Kardashian, wore a strapless white gown accessorised with a diamond necklace and white Manolo Blahnik heels.
Mr Alakija’s proud mother, Folorunsho, 66, is ranked as the richest black woman in the world and has an estimated fortune of £1.66billion. She overtook Oprah Winfrey as the richest woman of African descent in the world in 2014. Hamish Shephard, of BrideBook.co.uk, said: ‘The preparations and construction of their custom clear marquee, including a bespoke marble floor with their gold initials, would have required up to a week of exclusive hire of the Palace, with the cost of the marquee on top.’ Mr Alakija is a widower whose first wife died of cancer. They had one child.