What is love at first sight? Is it an announcement trumpeted by the heart, or a faint whisper that grows over repeated meetings, like an echo slowly becoming louder and more clear? For Joanna and Karim—the couple at the centre of this touching wedding at Four Seasons, Limmasol—it was most assuredly the latter.
For Karim, the story of their love begins at a Christmas party at a trendy bar in Abdel Wahab, in the year 2008. There, he was introduced to a woman with honey-blonde hair and golden skin, and though she was patched up and bandaged at the time owing to an accident, Karim saw straight through to her inner beauty. They clicked immediately and began talking—and talking, about everything from fashion and design to jewelry and textiles—until the clocked chimed 4 in the morning.
Though Karim knew from that moment on that he was smitten, Joanna—still disoriented from the aftermath of her accident—would remember but little about the dashing stranger. It might all have ended there, but fate had other plans: ‘I still remember the white leather jacket he was wearing,’ smirks Joanna, referring to the first vivid memory she has of Karim, a memento from the MYU in Gemmayzeh where they would meet again that following summer. ‘He asked a common friend about me, approached me and tried to invite me out for dinner, but I said no,’ she smiles. Still, Karim persisted: He knew that first night between them had all the makings of something real. He kept in touch with the occasional message and online chat; then, at a party in June 2009, Joanna agreed to go out with him. Over sushi and saki, the pair agreed to stay in touch, to try to make things work even though she was based in New York and he in Beirut.
As Joanna says now, ‘Thank God for technology.’ The pair made sure their lives stayed in sync, despite the many miles and the time difference, and in the meantime they bonded more and more deeply, Skying each day for hours. Eventually, their online romance grew into a fairytale, with romantic getaways to exotic Mykonos and Lake Como in Italy.
As most of these trips were organised by Karim, you can imagine his shock when, one day—just as he was preparing to Skype with Joanna—he heard the doorbell ring. There before him was the best surprise of his life: Joanna herself… And she was there to stay. Embracing Karim entirely, she left her old life behind her and settled in Lebanon, beginning a journey that would last through seven years of complicity, love, and respect.
Finally, on January 1, 2015, following New Years Eve celebrations, Karim knew it was time: During a romantic swim in the Indian Ocean off the shore of a Maldivian island, he popped the question: ‘Joanna, will you marry me?’ Joanna was so shocked and overjoyed that she swallowed a great gulp of ocean water before sputtering emphatically—’Yes!’
Thus the stage was set for this touching wedding at Four Seasons, Limmasol, where I was asked to act as official wedding photographer. Here, I shared in a celebration—full of close friends and family—that was both the end of a long journey and the beginning of a new chapter. In Joanna and Karim, I saw two people who can be beautifully human together, who have learned and lived the reality of writer Cassandra Clare’s wise words: “I could not tell you if I loved you the first moment I saw you, or if it was the second or third or fourth. But I remember the first moment I looked at you walking toward me and realized that somehow the rest of the world seemed to vanish when I was with you.”
