How DeepVeer made a top secret wedding a public spectacle

By Arré Bench

In case you haven’t had an internet connection and have been unable to witness the sight of a collective nation exercising their fundamental right of FOMO for the last two days, allow us to recap. National heartthrobs and joint ambassadors for Tourism Italy, Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh have publicly – yet secretly – married each other in the backdrop of Lake Como yesterday. Their wedding came a day after an engagement and mehndi ceremony that reportedly had Padukone dissolve in tears, Singh dance with a dhol in his hands, and the cheesiest expressions of PDA possible.

Like any other “low-key Konkani wedding”, DeepVeer’s wedding involved guests taking a boat and climbing up a hill in custom Sabyasachi while innumerable patrolling boats kept paparazzi at bay. The clincher was however, the couple’s no-picture rule: Padukone and Singh haven’t just asked their guests to not bring their cellphones to the wedding, but have also made security arrangements to cover a phone’s camera lens with stickers to hinder anyone from slyly leaking photos.

You see, even after promoting their wedding destination with more passion than an Imtiaz Ali film, the newlyweds expect their guests to keep it under wraps. And singer Harshdeep Kaur – who performed alongside Shubha Mudgal at the couple’s mehndi ceremony – became the first victim of this rule. She was swiftly asked to delete a picture that had her posing with her husband with Lake Como as the backdrop… a move the Gestapo would be proud of. Which means, that until now, the only images that we’ve been bestowed with are ones where we see the couple’s family trudge up a hill in their expensive white-and-gold outfits, a blurry, out-of-focus shot of Singh’s back, and a photo of Anisha Padukone being mistaken for Deepika.

Two weddings later, we’re yet to see an official picture of DeepVeer.

Two weddings later, we’re yet to see an official picture of the couple. But after a night of waiting, just when we were about to move on with our lives instead of obsessively refreshing Instagram, came a fascinating announcement: DeepVeer would share their exclusive picture at 6 pm. It’s been almost an hour since. Did we just get played again?

We have to say we’re a bit flummoxed at this point. Do DeepVeer want us to be hyped about their wedding, considering the first two episodes of Koffee With Karan were basically garnered toward announcing the ceremony? The official announcement of the wedding on the couple’s social media handles preceded the episode by a few hours. Or do they want us to stay out of it and just feed us enough information that leaves us wanting for more? Could it be possible that they’re FOMO-ing when we aren’t talking about them? By now, this feels like a lesson in privacy while also shouting about it from the rooftops.

Anushka and Virat just wanted an intimate destination wedding while Sonam and Anand wished for a star-studded spectacle and they went about their ways to have it. But with DeepVeer, we can’t really tell: These episodic bursts of information from their side, are designed to create renewed interest in their union (even in a Union Minister, no less), even when they claim otherwise. Can we now have those damned pictures please?


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