IRAN: The First of Azar, 1338

No Cinderella had ever put in quite so exhausting a month, and 21-year-old Farah Diba herself admitted that she would never have been able to see it through “if I were not strong and had not exercised regularly since I was young.” From the moment that Iran’s Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlevi, 40, decided that she would sit beside him on the Peacock Throne of Iran as his third wife (TIME, Nov. 2), Farah’s days of girlhood were over.

Only a year before, she had been just one more mousy foreign student, working at architecture at the Ecole Speciale d’Architecture in Paris. Though she was a member of one of Iran’s wealthy “1,000 families,” and could, like so many in the Moslem world, trace her ancestry back to the Prophet, she scraped along on the meager allowance her family was allowed to send out of Iran under the stringent controls on foreign exchange. Only occasionally could she squander precious francs on coffee with chums at a sidewalk café, or blow herself to a gallery seat at concerts (where she developed a passion for Chopin and Beethoven).

Last May, while home on vacation, Farah decided to apply for permission to receive a bigger allowance. The young man in charge of overseas students happened to be the Shah’s son-in-law, Arda-shir Zahedi. Captivated by Farah, Arda-shir introduced her to his wife, who in turn introduced her to the Shah. And so, last month, Farah was back in Paris again, shopping. This time, there were no financial restrictions at all.

A Touch of Magic. In Paris Farah also took lessons in court etiquette from the Iranian embassy, and read up on the life of the Shah’s father, the onetime army noncom who founded the Pahlevi ruling line. Paris’ finest houses of fashion—Dior, Jacqueline Godard, Revillon—in turn performed their magic, and hair stylist Carita transformed her from a pert ingenue with chestnut bangs into a chic young woman with a mountainous hairdo (Carita also saved a lock of Farah’s hair to plait with those of other celebrity customers, including Princess Grace and Brigitte Bardot). Finally, as 50 seamstresses set to work on the royal wedding dress, the future Queen Farah, Empress of Persia, was ready to gohome.

Last week the royal engagement was officially announced in a brief communique, signed by the Minister of the Imperial Court, proclaiming that a small ceremony would take place at the imperial residence on that very afternoon of the first of Azar, 1338.* Impatiently that morning, the Shah drove twelve miles out of Teheran in his bulletproof Rolls-Royce to lead the annual first of Azar tree-planting ceremony, then in late afternoon broke up a three-hour Cabinet session on the high cost of living to hurry off to the ceremony.

A Bit of Sweet. When he arrived, in the bemedaled uniform of Commander in Chief of the Iranian Armed Forces. Farah was already waiting for him, in a glittering Water of the Nile creation by Yves Saint-Laurent. Dior’s 23-year-old successor (who has a date ahead with the French army—see PEOPLE). Huge bouquets, sent by government officials, the diplomatic corps and members of Iran’s “1,000 families.” filled the tapestried room. The Shah slipped a diamond ring on his fiancee’s finger, and the room rang with cries of “Mubarak!—Congratulations.” Heavily sugared baghlava was then offered to the cheering guests in accordance with the ancient Persian custom of serving something sweet after something happy.

The wedding will take place Dec. 21. And two years from then, the Shah will at long last be officially crowned as Emperor —an occasion he has reluctantly been putting off until the House of Pahlevi should finally be blessed with a male heir, as he hopes by then it will be.

* The Iranians, like other Moslems, start their calendar not from the Christian year i, but from A.D. 622, the year of Mohammed’s hegira.