Sania-Shoaib's reception, a 3.5 cr deal

ManyHollywood weddings – done with an opulence that would put children’sprincess fairytales to shame – sell exclusive coverage rights to aparticular publication that helps them to recover some or all of the money, andchoose the prettiest pictures to go to press. And the amount that publicationsare willing to shell out for exclusive, official wedding pictures is no lessthan princely. But Hollywood star weddings are in another league, after all. Forone, you’d have millions of people the world over dying to get a glimpse!While mentioning wedding deals, it’s hard not to mention the most lucrative ones. After all, the plum pudding of the weddings turned out to be more mouth watering than the wedding cakes themselves. Who can forget Elizabeth Hurley and Arun Nayar’s lavish Jodhpur wedding that rivalled royalty itself? But in retrospect, it was money well spent, one would say. The March 2007 wedding’s photo rights were sold to Hello magazine for a reported 2 million pounds, so that the world could ooh and aah at the spectacular show in full Indian splendour. However, when actress CatherineZeta Jones married Hollywood royalty Michael Douglas in what was calledHollywood’s wedding of the year, in November 2000, the plum turned out tobe a case of sour grapes. Dubbed ‘Hollywood style meets Gotham glamour andWelsh warmth,’ the 1.5 million pound wedding ceremony’s exclusiverights were sold to OK! magazine for 1 million pounds. Security was so tight,guests had to show their hologrammed invitations before being allowed in andprivate photographs were banned. However, Hello magazine printed unofficial‘sneaked’ photos of the wedding, ruining Ok!’s exclusivity,and starting a lengthy court battle with the rival tabloid. But it isn’t just weddings that are ‘sold’ for megabucks. Star kids can be even more money-spinning. Brad Pitt and Angeline Jolie capitalised on their brood to laugh all the way to the bank; only this time, all the cash was for charity. They sold their newborn twins’ exclusive photos jointly sold to People and Hello magazines for USD 14 million, making them most expensive celebrity pictures ever sold. Daughter Shiloh’s pics in June 2006 were sold for USD 4.1 million and son Pax Thien’s in March 2007 for USD 2 million. It has never been officially confirmed, but Abhishek and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s wedding rights reportedly went under the hammer too. Buzz was that the Bachchans wanted the best deal and were said to have negotiated with Hello, but then sold the rights to a UK TV channel, which was also why the event was strictly out of bounds for desi media. But coming back to Shoaib and Sania Mirzaactually why come backto them at all?Follow us on Twitter for more stories