Sobhita Dhulipala was unable to attend the 52nd International Emmy Awards, where the Hindi-language television show she starred in, “The Night Manager,” was nominated for best drama series. But she had a good reason: She was getting ready to marry her fellow actor, Naga Chaitanya Akkineni.
Ms. Dhulipala, who recently starred in Dev Patel’s “Monkey Man,” works largely in the Hindi film industry. Mr. Akkineni, a prominent figure in Telugu cinema (also known as Tollywood), comes from a lineage of famous Telugu-speaking actors. On Dec. 4, the couple married at Annapurna Studios, a family-owned film studio in Hyderabad, India, founded by Mr. Akkineni’s grandfather, Nageswara Rao Akkineni, who died in 2014.
“It’s very sentimental to the family,” said Mr. Akkineni, 38. “There is actually a statue of him over there in the facilities, so the whole idea was to get married in front of him with his blessings.”
Approximately 300 guests attended, which Mr. Akkineni described, without irony, as “very small” and “intimate.”
“What’s expected out of an actor is more, in whatever way,” Ms. Dhulipala, 32, said.
But Ms. Dhulipala described her wedding as “pulled down.” She planned it herself in two months while also shooting a new film.
“I didn’t want to be burdened by that ‘more,’” she said, adding that the wedding was a spiritual and “temple-like experience.” The couple drew heavily from the rich traditions and culture of South India, where both actors are from.
Ms. Dhulipala and Mr. Akkineni first met in passing at his father’s residence years ago. Ms. Dhulipala had starred in a 2018 Telugu spy film called “Goodachari.” Mr. Akkineni’s father, who had admired her performance in it, invited her to his house for a family lunch. Mr. Akkineni briefly dropped in, but it wasn’t until April 2022 that they had an actual conversation, a year after his first marriage ended in divorce.
Mr. Akkineni had been following Ms. Dhulipala on Instagram, and she eventually followed him back that April. The next day, she responded to an Instagram story he posted about a new sushi dish at the Japanese restaurant he owns in Hyderabad, called Shoyu. She considers herself “a foodie,” and they had a conversation about one of her favorite topics.
There are more than 100 “major” languages spoken in India, and Mr. Akkineni and Ms. Dhulipala quickly bonded over their shared native tongue: Telugu.
“In our industry, we meet a variety of people from different languages,” Mr. Akkineni said. But, speaking with her in Telugu, he added, brought him close to his roots and made him feel at home. “Just hearing that same texture and having that same warmth when you speak to someone — I think it just drew me closer so much faster,” he said.
Mr. Akkineni was born in Hyderabad, the capital of southern India’s Telangana state, where Telugu is spoken. But when he was young, he moved to Chennai, the capital of the state of Tamil Nadu, and lived there for nearly two decades. There, Tamil is spoken. Though he eventually moved back to Hyderabad, where he graduated from St. Mary’s College with a bachelor’s degree in commerce, his command of the Telugu language was not as strong as Ms. Dhulipala’s, he said.
Ms. Dhulipala grew up in Visakhapatnam, a city in the state of Andhra Pradesh. After high school, she moved to Mumbai, where she graduated from the University of Mumbai with a bachelor’s degree in commerce. In Mumbai, she largely speaks Hindi, so she also enjoyed speaking her native tongue with him.
“I keep telling her to keep talking to me in Telugu so I can improve,” Mr. Akkineni said.
He enjoyed that she was “very, very deep with her words,” and she appreciated that he had a tendency to like her stories that showed more of her personality — quotes and blurry photos — as opposed to “glamorous” or “PR savvy images,” she said.
“With actors, sometimes we are trying to put something out there about our films or something about a product — most of it is staged in a way,” Mr. Akkineni said. “So when something pops up that’s very organic and real about a person, I immediately gravitate to that kind of content.”
Throughout their relationship, Ms. Dhulipala has lived in Mumbai, and Mr. Akkineni in Hyderabad. A couple weeks after they started talking on Instagram, he took an hourlong flight to Mumbai just for a lunch date with her at Pali Village Café. “That was the charming part,” she said. “It was so old school in a way.”
“I’m not a fan of texting,” Mr. Akkineni said. “I’m not a fan of communicating on social media.”
About a week later, they saw each other again at an Amazon Prime event in Mumbai. She was there for the Prime Video series she stars in, “Made in Heaven,” and he was there for his series, “Dhootha.”
“I was in a red dress, he was in a blue suit,” Ms. Dhulipala said. “And the rest is history.”
That summer, they went on their first trip together to Bandipur National Park in the Indian state of Karnataka with Mr. Akkineni’s friends. They were bonding, laughing, playing chess and painting each other’s hands in henna.
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“He’s a doer. I’m a be-er,” Ms. Dhulipala said. “I’m the fluttering kite and he’s the anchor.”
“Our dissimilarities really kept us interested and curious about each other,” she continued.
In November, they went to London to celebrate his birthday. He loves techno music, and one of his favorite artists, the Tale of Us, was playing a concert there. Ms. Dhulipala was eager to explore his musical interests because she had largely listened to a lot of Hindi, Carnatic, folk and classical music.
Did she like it? “I was overwhelmed,” she said. Ms. Dhulipala described herself as “quite the hermit,” but she realized how important she was to him during that trip because he usually celebrates his birthday with his friends.
After the London trip, she met his family for a New Year’s Eve celebration. He met her family the following year, in 2023, in her family’s home in Visakhapatnam.
“There is alignment, there’s chemistry, there’s curiosity,” Ms. Dhulipala said. “And it became obvious that our dissimilarities kept the tension alive in good ways and bad. We definitely wanted each other — that much was understood.” Mr. Akkineni proposed in August on a trip to Goa, India.
On Nov. 28, Ms. Dhulipala held several Telugu pre-wedding events in Visakhapatnam, including a raata, a ritual in which prayers are made to eight Hindu deities, and the mangala snanam, a ceremony in which turmeric paste is applied to the bride’s body as a part of an auspicious cleansing process.
On Nov. 29, she had an event called the pelli kuthuru, which translates to “daughter of the marriage” in Telugu, in which elders bless the bride. That night, she threw a “young people’s party,” she said, or a “YPP,” with 40 close friends. It was themed “banjara,” a term used to describe nomadic groups in India, in honor of her post-college era when she backpacked a lot. (Her father entered the “YPP” at one point, and she had to ask him “politely” to leave.)
Mr. Akkineni’s pelli koduku, which translates to “son of the marriage,” was held the morning of the wedding at his uncle’s home in Hyderabad.
The wedding ceremony, held on Dec. 4, started at around 5 p.m. when Mr. Akkineni made his entrance, dancing his way into the room with his friends.
Then, their families exchanged gifts, including clothes, sweets and fruits. Ms. Dhulipala then made her entrance, and a series of ritualistic practices took place for hours. At 8:13 p.m., the most auspicious time calculated using their birth charts, they slapped a paste consisting of jaggery and cumin onto each other’s heads. This Telugu ritual symbolizes the couple’s commitment to each other. Dattatreya Sarma, a Hindu priest, officiated.
After the wedding, Ms. Dhulipala moved into Mr. Akkineni’s home in Hyderabad, but she’ll be “shuffling to wherever work beckons,” she said. Ms. Dhulipala plans to work on more films in the United States and around the world. “I’m just a storyteller, and I want to belong on different canvases,” she said. “I want to go and sing my song in different places.”
Of her journey with Mr. Akkineni, “It was cute, and it was steady,” Ms. Dhulipala said. “It’s not a case of two tender hearts falling in love. It was more like two metals being welded by the same wants from life, and we were able to speak about those things freely without inhibitions. That moved me.”
On This Day
When Dec. 4, 2024
Where Annapurna Studios, Hyderabad, India
Local Designers Ms. Dhulipala wore two saris by Gaurang Shah. She entered the wedding venue in a silk sari woven with real gold. She later changed into a white cotton sari that was woven in a village nearby, Ponduru.
South Indian Food There were five food stations churning out the most popular dishes from each of the five states in southern India: Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. They also had a station with Japanese food from Mr. Akkineni’s restaurant, Shoyu.
Ancient Music Local musicians played ancient instruments throughout the wedding day. There were no vocals. The couple avoided having star performers, which is common at Indian actors’ weddings. “I detest homogeneity,” Ms. Dhulipala said. “It gives me the ick.”
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