Mumbai: After months of speculation, it's finally happened.

Bollywood's most-talked about couple, actors Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan got engaged on Sunday evening in a closely-guarded ceremony.

Abhishek's father and superstar Amitabh Bachchan confirmed the news to CNN-IBN.

The engagement ceremony took place at Bachchan's Mumbai residence - called Jalsa - soon after the couple returned from the premiere of their latest film Guru in Toronto and New York.

Among those present were Amitabh Bachchan, his wife Jaya Bachchan, the family's close friend and Samajwadi Party General Secretary Amar Singh, Aishwarya's parents, and industrialist Anil Ambani with his wife Tina Ambani.

Sources have told CNN-IBN that the couple is expected to tie the knot shortly.

According to a national daily, the tentative dates fixed for the big day are February 19 or March 7. "The children have decided. We are very happy and thought we should go ahead with the ‘roka’ ceremony. It was held in the evening," the daily quoted Amitabh Bachchan as saying.

It is believed that Abhishek - who will turn 31 next month - proposed 33-year-old Aishwarya after the premiere of Guru in New York and the actress accepted the proposal immediately.

Guru's release on Friday was preceded by weeks of speculation of the actors' budding off-screen romance.

But everyone, including Amitabh Bachchan , had remained tight-lipped about the much-hyped romance between the two. "It's up to Abhishek as to whom he would marry and when he would go about it," the Big B had told CNN-IBN in an interview late last year.

It was in November last year that rumours of the couple tying the knot first started doing the rounds, when a garlanded Aishwarya and Abhishek – accompanied by the senior Bachchans – were seen emerging from Varanasi's Sankat Mochan temple.

Soon after the temple visit, speculation was rife that the couple - who have featured in five movies together so far - had got married much earlier at the Meenakshi temple in Madurai.

But now all speculation can be put to rest and the film industry can gear up for what is likely to be perhaps the biggest wedding of Bollywood.

The couple, along with Amitabh, Amar Singh and Amitabh's daughter Shweta Nanda, have now flown to the temple town of Ujjain to take a holy dip.