Shashi Tharoor with Sunanda Pushkar after their wedding at his ancestral home in Palakkad, Kerala, on Sunday. (PTI)

Palakkad, Aug. 22: Happy Onam, Mrs and Mr Tharoor.

Shashi Tharoor and his Kashmiri fiancée Sunanda Pushkar tied the knot today, on the first day of Malayalee harvest festival Onam, at a typical Kerala wedding.

The wedding came nearly three weeks after the former junior foreign minister and Sunanda were spotted at a Shani temple doing puja for “family peace”, sparking a buzz that they would soon marry.

A few days later, they offered prayers at Ajmer Sharif. In between, at a lecture in Mumbai, Tharoor apparently acknowledged Sunanda was his fiancée.

“They asked me if I was going to bring my visual aid. So I have brought one,” he was reported to have said looking in Sunanda’s direction.

Their relationship, known only to close friends initially, had hit headlines early this year over Sunanda’s “sweat equity” in a company, which led the consortium that won the IPL Kochi bid.

The controversy forced Tharoor, already under fire for his personal — and not-so-personal — tweets to step down as minister.

All that seemed to have been left behind this morning as the debonair former diplomat, dressed in the traditional white mundu and jubba, stepped up to circle the kathir mandapam (marriage venue) thrice before taking his seat on the platform at his ancestral home in Elavanchery, 125km from Kochi.

Sunanda, bashful in off-white blouse and mundu, was led in a thalapoli — rows of girls with floral garlands — as drummers and clarinet players raised the pitch.

Shortly before 8.30, the couple tied the traditional tali, the nuptial thread, helped by Tharoor’s sisters Shobha and Smita. Then they exchanged garlands. Tharoor, 54, presented a pudava (sari) to Sunanda, who is in her forties.

Tharoor’s twin sons, Ishaan and Kanishk, from his first marriage and Sunanda’s son Shiva joined the family in showering petals on the newly-weds.

Among the invitees were Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar and former diplomat T.P. Sreenivasan.

The couple had their marriage registered before the wedding ceremony. They were blessed by the groom’s grandmother, Jayasankari Amma, 94, who lives in Tharoor’s ancestral home in Elavanchery, as musicians played the panchvadyam, an ensemble of five instruments.

The presence of the media ensured live coverage of the marriage, Tharoor’s third. The former UN undersecretary general had been earlier married to his UN colleague Christa Giles. Their divorce came through last month. Before that, Tharoor had been married to academic Tilottama Mukherjee.

For Sunanda, too, it was her third marriage.

After a vegetarian feast, Tharoor and Sunanda drove to Palakkad and then took a helicopter to temple town Guruvayur. They will host select guests in Thiruvananthapuram tomorrow.

A reception has been planned in Dubai from August 29-31, though the location has not been disclosed for security reasons. The couple will leave for Spain on September 3 for their honeymoon.

A report from Dubai said Sunanda’s wedding outfits had been created by Dubai-based designer Anjali Chandiramani.

“She wanted to go for a classic look with flair, which is what I kept in mind while designing her sari,” Anjali said.

Classic and “tweet”, shall we say?