MUMBAI: Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli and Bollywood actress Anushka Sharma got married in Italy on Monday, they said in a statement, ending weeks of frenzied speculation that they were getting hitched.

“Today we have promised each other to be bound in love forever. We are truly blessed to share the news with you,” the celebrity couple said, adding that it had been a “beautiful day”.

A statement sent to journalists said the wedding had been attended by close family and a few friends as “they wished their wedding to be a very private affair”. The ceremony was performed as per Hindu rituals, it added.

Kohli and Sharma, both 29, posted different photos of themselves smiling together and dressed in colourful Indian wedding garb on their Twitter feeds late on Monday.

The statement added that the couple will host a reception in New Delhi for relatives on Dec 21, followed by a celebration in Mumbai on Dec 26.

They will live in Mumbai, the home of India’s Hindi film industry, it said.

Rumours of their impending nuptials started swirling recently when Kohli pulled out of India’s limited-overs matches against Sri Lanka and Sharma also ducked out of her busy acting schedule in December. Indian TV channels have billed it as the “wedding of the year”.

Kohli and Sharma started dating in 2013 after they met during the filming of a shampoo advert. The high-profile couple made their first public appearance a year later during a football match.

Kohli is one of the world’s highest-paid athletes and a huge star in cricket-obsessed India, and Sharma is one of the top actresses in the country’s multi-billion-dollar film industry.

Published in Dawn, December 12th, 2017