Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain plans a second wedding to husband Abdal
Happy couple have three children following an arranged marriage after just ONE meeting
REIGNING Great British Bake Off champion Nadiya Hussain plans to crown her dream year with a second wedding to husband Abdal.
The devoted couple had an arranged marriage when Nadiya was 19, having only met once before the big day.
Nadiya, now 31, says: “We’re married Islamically but we’ve never done the proper vows here.
“So we’re talking about making it all ‘official’. It’s a great excuse for a party.”
Nadiya won a dramatic Bake Off final in October when her lemon drizzle wedding cake, decorated with a red, white and blue theme, pipped rivals in the showstopper round.
Since then she has signed publishing deals for recipe books, novels and children’s stories, been on TV’s Loose Women and baked the Queen’s 90th birthday cake.
She says: “I thought meeting Lenny Henry was going to be the pinnacle of my career.
“Then I got the phone call asking me to make the Queen’s birthday cake. When she saw it she asked what kind of cake it was and which tier she should cut. Then Prince Philip came over and she introduced me to him. I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s the Queen introducing me’.
“She said, ‘This is the young lady who won the bake off’.
“And he said, ‘Yes dear, I know who she is, but what flavour is the cake?’.”
Abdal got a lot of attention about his looks
This summer she will be appearing in BBC1’s The Chronicles of Nadiya, where she takes a food-inspired journey from her birthplace in Luton to her family village of Bangladesh.
And she is clear she couldn’t enjoy such opportunities without 34-year-old Abdal’s help.
She says: “He’s definitely been my biggest support throughout all of this, and he’s had to take on a very different role at home.
“He irons clothes now, feeds the kids and does the dishes. No relationship is 50/50, as someone always gives a little bit more.
“At the moment he’s the one giving a lot more.”
It was Abdal who first pushed her to sign up for Bake Off.
Nadiya says: “My husband told me to apply two years ago and I said, ‘No, I can’t do it’.
“I didn’t have the confidence. To be fair, I still didn’t when I applied last year.
“But he filled out the application form without me, so I didn’t really have a choice.
“Then, when I got in, I picked up the phone three times to tell them I didn’t want to do it.
“But Abdal said to me, ‘You’ve been at home for the past ten years looking after the children. When are you going to do something for you?’.”
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Abdal then appeared in the final to support his wife and left viewers swooning.
Nadiya says: “Abdal got a lot of attention about his looks.
“He’s had the odd strange tweet from middle-aged men saying, ‘Are you in London? Fancy meeting up?’.
“I said, ‘That’s a compliment. You appeal to everybody’.
“But he’s not vain at all. I don’t think he realises how good-looking and lovely he actually is.”
While the pair met only once before their wedding day, they did get to know each other on the phone for six months before.
The couple fell in love, and Nadiya is proud of making her marriage work.
She says: “Our rule was always that regardless of what happens, we can’t leave each other. So that meant we had to work through everything.
“Marriage isn’t easy, especially when you don’t know somebody very well. There were definitely times when I could have said, ‘I’m done. I’m not enjoying this any more’. But we have always been very happy. I’m one of the lucky ones.”
Nadiya, who has decided she will not arrange marriages for her own children, two sons and a daughter under ten, likes being a role model for multicultural Britain.
She says: “It’s great I can be a poster girl because I represent many people like me.
“But the most important people to be a good role model for are my kids.”
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