10 Bollywood bridal looks from yesteryear. Irresistible!

Did you think that it’s only today’s Bollywood brides with their designer clothes and 40 lakh necklaces who can truly look glam?

Think again. Here are some B-town bridal looks of yesteryear that go to show that true glamour isn’t always in what one’s wearing or how much one has spent on it!

Back in the year 1966, when Saira Banu married Dilip Kumar, nobody knew the name of the fashion designer. If there was one, that is.

Nor were there any colour pix. But even if an extravagant floral sehra covered almost all the jewellery we would have wanted to look at, the bride’s natural beauty and her sheer happiness shone right through.

Saira had a crush on Dilip from very early on, and though he thought they were not well matched in terms of age, on that day, she finally got her man!

Some years later, in 1969, Sharmila Tagore married Mansur Ali Khan, the Nawab of Pataudi. Yes, yes, we know you know that Kareena wore her mother in law’s sharara for her walima reception! Well, here’s that outfit on its original wearer, and we think she carried it with more panache!

And this formal photo of the couple in their bridal clothes was shot much later, when Sharmila and Pataudi were well into their forties. Talk about aging gracefully….now that’s what a Nawab and his Begum should look like, we say.

In 1971, Babita (nee Shivdasani), then at the height of her on screen popularity, became the first filmy Kapoor bahu, marrying Randhir, the eldest son of Raj Kapoor. We like the very stylish earrings and the Benaras stole, as well as the grace with which Babita sits so elegantly erect in the midst of what must have been chaos.

When Dimple Kapadia married Rajesh Khanna in 1973, she was just 16,  a full decade and a half younger than the super star. Here is one picture where her jewelry can actually be seen under the flowers. We don’t care for the somewhat jhatak necklace and nath.

It’s just as well that Dimple’s taste in jewellery improved over the years! Or that someone with a sense of colour and style took her in hand.

Here’s a colour picture of the two; that sari isn’t really all that attractive either, nor are the garlands coordinated with the sari. And that orange sindoor…. hm. But when you’re 16, what the heck, you can pretty much carry anything off.

The other big Bollywood wedding of 1973 was the one between Tanuja and Shomu Mukherjee, that brought together two film families, the Mukherjees and the Samarths.

Tanuja was dressed as a Marathi bride though she was marrying a Bengali, something her daughter Kajol also did when she married Ajay Devgan three decades later.

Here is Tanuja now, looking as perky and beautiful as ever. She didn’t go overboard at all: we love the traditional bajuband and what would have been green glass bangles. Just right.

And if you thought that was all for 1973, no. That year, getting married was like a B-town epidemic.  Here is Jaya Bhaduri Bachchan with the next superstar on their wedding day.

We totally approve of the relatively narrow-bordered sari and just-enough jewellery.

Jump to 1980, the wedding of Neetu Singh and Rishi Kapoor. We prefer Neetu’s reception look because we can actually see something other than the messy flowers and gota of the phera ceremony.

Her heavily worked gajji silk sari went well with jewellery that was surprisingly subtle for the next Kapoor bahu, and one who, like Babita, was also a star in her own right.

Finally, the most controversial wedding of all, and the least dolled up bride: Hema Malini with Dharmendra in Chennai, 1980. The ‘dream girl’ wore a simple kanjeevaram and hardly any jewellery at all, but with that face and smile, what else matters?

Watch out for Part 2 of this story, featuring more contemporary B’town brides: Madhuri, Raveena, Karishma, Kajol, Genelia, Shilpa, Vidya and Kareena!