Celebrities in wedlock

Syed Rizwanullah confirms he is getting married to model Fayeza Ansari.

LAHORE:

They have always been joined to the hip (most literally with their recent ad with Toni & Guy that sent shock waves for its raw sensuality) but little did anyone know that these best buds have transformed into lovers.

When Syed Rizwanullah indeed confirmed that he is getting married to the sultry model Fayeza Ansari, many a jaw dropped. “It’s the right time and when you find the right person, why wait?” says Rizwanullah pragmatically. “It’s such an incredible feeling to find someone who knows you inside out and still wants to be with you,” added the excited designer. Ansari is just as thrilled, “It feels so great and comfortable since I we have been friends for so long and I have known his family as well.”

Ansari and Rizwanullah have both been prominent and ever-present on the fashion front; Rizwanullah with his desi and edgy design aesthetic and his outlandish personal style, and Ansari for her seamless walks on the ramp and eloquent charisma in her shoots. “It takes a while to realise that the person you like is in front of you all along. Fayeza inspires me and I learn from her. It feels fanastic,” says Rizwanullah.

Ansari who never attends weddings unless she absolutely has to and cannot avoid it revealed, “We would talk about marriage but wanted to gauge our compatibility together first. When you’re friends it doesn’t really make sense to date you know.”

He is fashion’s most exciting new discovery and she is fashion’s most versatile model. Together Rizwanullah and Fayeza Ansari, along with their coterie of close friends like the VJ Natasha Saleem, VJ turned actor Mahirah Khan Askari and designer par excellence, Feeha Jamshed, are the shining stars of Pakistan’s fashion and entertainment industry.

Is this a business tactic, akin to a merger of two fashion brands? “It’s more than a merger,” says Rizwanullah eschewing the crude economic thought for a more poetic explanation, “We are companions. Friends first then lovers.” So together they are one, I quip? “Not a one or a two, but an 11. We have our own personalities and are strong individuals in our own right who walk side by side. We are all suckers for love but contrary to what people believe we aren’t crazy about things,” says Rizwanullah. This coming from someone as vivacious as Rizwanullah is certainly hard to digest, “I’m not a foolish lover. I’m a sensible lover,” he adds.

Who would have thought of him as a traditionalist at heart? His present to Fayeza, who he has been officially ‘dating’ per se since last year, was a surprise visit to her mother to ask for her hand in marriage while she was doing a shoot in Lahore.    “The value of a relationship is not gauged by how happy someone makes you but by how much you miss that person when they’re not there. When Fayeza was shooting over Valentine’s Day I realized how much I missed her and just wanted to be with her all the time,” he gushes. “I went up to her mom and said ‘I want to be your son’, and that was our ‘baat pakki’ and Fayeza didn’t even know.

The fashion savvy couples are to be engaged in March and they are both designing their own clothes themselves.”That’s the most fun part,” she says. “They won’t be like the conventional shadi joras,” discloses Ansari who says she never did a bridal shoot since she was probably waiting to be a bride one day.

The wedding will be held in three months depending on when they can manage to decide a date for themselves. “From the realms of love-marriage we took the arranged-marriage route to share this with our families. If it was up to me we would be married already,” concludes Rizwanullah.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 20^th, 2011.