Model who went from a Cheshire council house to £5million Blenheim Palace bride
‘Mother was bankrupt’
She was the ecstatic bride at the most lavish wedding of the year.
But Iranian-born model Nazanin Ghaissarifar’s £5million nuptials at Blenheim Palace – complete with one 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 £1.66billion fortune courtesy of his mother, Nigerian oil tycoon Folorunsho, 66.
But details of his bride’s family life reveal the vast difference in the couple’s backgrounds. The new Mrs Alakija’s own divorcee mother, Nooshin, 51, was declared bankrupt in 2014 and now lives in a three-bedroom semi in Knutsford, which is owned by the local housing association. 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 television star Rob Kardashian. But she was registered on the electoral roll at the Knutsford address with her mother and brother as recently as 2015.
It is believed that her mother’s financial troubles began after the breakdown of her marriage to restaurateur Reza Mortaz Jalili, whom she married in 2003.
Nooshin, Nazanin and her brother moved a mile away from the £260,000 home in Wilmslow previously shared by the couple, and on March 12, 2014, unemployed Nooshin received a bankruptcy order at Macclesfield County Court.
Within a year, the family had split up and Nooshin was living in the housing association property in Knutsford.
Then last year, Sam was charged with two counts of drug driving after speeding through Macclesfield town centre.
Nazanin’s new husband, meanwhile, is the youngest of four sons to billionaire parents Modupe and Folorunsho Alakija, and studied geography at Imperial College, London.
The widower’s first wife Chena, with whom he had a daughter, died of cancer six years ago. His mother, who is number 80 on Forbes magazine’s global Power Women list, overtook Oprah Winfrey as the richest woman of African descent.
It is thought the family flew hundreds of close friends and family members from Nigeria to the lavish ceremony in Oxfordshire. It followed another 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.