Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas: Two Ceremonies, a Palace and One Very Serious Bridal Wardrobe

Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas did not have a wedding.

They had a sequence of events involving a palace, multiple ceremonies, several extraordinary outfits, a sangeet, a mehndi, a Hindu wedding, a Christian wedding and enough embroidery to keep an entire atelier occupied for months.

And somehow, instead of feeling like two traditions competing with one another, the celebration worked because both were given room to exist properly.

A wedding at Umaid Bhawan Palace

Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas married in December 2018 at Umaid Bhawan Palace in Jodhpur, Rajasthan.

The setting was already spectacular before anybody added a single flower.

Part luxury hotel, part royal residence and one of Jodhpur’s great architectural landmarks, the palace gave the wedding exactly the sort of scale required for a celebration involving both Indian and Western traditions.

The festivities began days before the ceremonies themselves, with traditional events including a puja, mehndi, haldi and sangeet.

This was never going to be a one-dress weekend.

The Christian ceremony

The couple first married in a Christian ceremony on December 1, officiated by Nick’s father, Paul Kevin Jonas Sr.

For it, Priyanka wore a custom Ralph Lauren wedding gown.

The choice had a nice bit of history behind it: Ralph Lauren had dressed both Priyanka and Nick for the 2017 Met Gala, one of their earliest major public appearances together.

The wedding dress itself was extraordinarily detailed.

It featured long scalloped sleeves, a high neckline and hand embroidery incorporating floral and scroll motifs, pearl paillettes and Swarovski crystals.

Underneath was a strapless column dress covered with more than two million mother-of-pearl sequins.

Apparently choosing between embroidery and sequins was unnecessary.

Correct decision.

And then came the 75-foot veil

The Ralph Lauren gown was accompanied by an enormous tulle veil extending approximately 75 feet behind the bride.

This was not a veil designed to quietly follow Priyanka down the aisle.

It required assistance.

And honestly, if you are getting married in a palace, this is one of the rare situations in life when a 75-foot veil feels completely reasonable.

Scale matters.

The Hindu ceremony

The following day, the couple married again in a traditional Hindu ceremony.

For this celebration, Priyanka wore a custom red Sabyasachi lehenga.

The intensely embroidered look included silk-floss French knots, red crystals and intricate handwork.

According to Sabyasachi, the lehenga required 110 embroiderers and more than 3,700 hours of work.

This is the point at which the phrase “wedding dress” begins to feel inadequate.

It was closer to wearable architecture.

Nick’s Indian wedding look

Nick wore a traditional gold silk sherwani for the Hindu ceremony, styled with a hand-embroidered chikan dupatta and a traditional safa.

I always appreciate when an intercultural wedding does not visually reduce one half of the couple to “person standing next to the interesting clothes.”

Here, both bride and groom fully entered the visual language of the ceremony.

The sangeet was not exactly restrained either

Before the weddings, the families came together for the traditional sangeet celebration.

This became an elaborate performance night, with the two families competing through music and dance while telling the story of Priyanka and Nick’s relationship.

So yes, essentially a family talent show.

Except the families involved included Bollywood performers and Jonas Brothers.

Slight advantage over the average wedding reception.

Why the two ceremonies worked

The most interesting thing about this wedding is that neither ceremony felt like the secondary one.

The Christian service had its own fashion, ritual and visual identity.

The Hindu ceremony had an entirely different colour palette, wardrobe and religious meaning.

Neither needed to be diluted into some vague middle ground in order to make the wedding feel cohesive.

The cohesion came from the couple themselves.

That is probably a much better way to approach a multicultural wedding anyway.

Red bride, white bride

From a fashion perspective, Priyanka also got to inhabit two completely different versions of bridal tradition.

The Ralph Lauren gown was white, fitted and elaborately embellished, but recognisably Western bridal.

The Sabyasachi lehenga was saturated red, densely embroidered and rooted in Indian bridal tradition.

Trying to decide which one was “the” wedding dress rather misses the point.

They were designed for different ceremonies, different traditions and different moments.

And both were spectacular.

The celebrations continued

Even after the Jodhpur wedding weekend ended, Priyanka and Nick were not quite finished.

They later celebrated with receptions in Mumbai and another gathering in North Carolina with Nick’s family.

At some point this stops being a wedding weekend and becomes a wedding season.

I support it.

The RCW verdict

Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas’s wedding could easily have become a spectacle with no centre.

There was certainly enough spectacle available.

But beneath the palace, couture and astonishing amount of hand embroidery, the wedding had a very clear idea: both families and both traditions mattered.

And visually, that gave us two completely different but equally memorable bridal moments.

A Ralph Lauren gown with a 75-foot veil on Saturday.

A hand-embroidered red Sabyasachi lehenga on Sunday.

Why choose one bridal fantasy when you can quite reasonably have both?