“The immediate thought we both had after the Cairo wedding fell through was that if we didn’t do it within the next few months, we would probably never do it at all,” shares Karina. So, the couple quickly pivoted and booked the rooftop of Nine Orchard in New York City for a June 27 celebration. “It had to happen! I also believe that momentum is a very important thing and we already had the momentum going,” says Kareem. “It’s very hard to build that up again.”
While the couple admits to feeling some stress over the year that they planned the Egyptian affair, they were much more laissez-faire with their NYC plans. “After we had to cancel the Cairo wedding, we immediately hired our friends’ wedding planner for New York and took a much more ‘let’s just get this party started’ approach, hoping the vibes would carry the whole thing, and, I think, they actually did,” says the bride. Those vibes translated to their black tie-adjacent dress code, where men were asked to wear tuxedos. “We kind of told the women to just do their thing, since they always tend to look wonderful,” says Karina. Planner Brittany Coyne took charge of bringing the wedding together in just a few months. Karina says, “I will be forever grateful to her for being my confidante throughout the entire day—helping me sneak away to my room for social breaks, jump from one dress into another, and somehow magically preserve my veil, gloves, and flowers.”
Luckily, the couple’s wedding wardrobes were already in place by the time they needed to change gears. The bride found her dress—a vintage ’90s Vera Wang strapless gown—at Happy Isles. “My wedding dress was the very first dress I tried on,” says Karina. “It spoke to me the moment I stepped into it. We tried on a few others simply because we were already there, but I could have left right then and there. I had already made my decision, and nothing could compete with the first dress. I bought it on the spot.” The bride took an easygoing approach to accessorizing the embellished look. “I ended up wearing only a pair of 1940s earrings that I bought at Amarcord Vintage five years ago for a UN gala,” she says. “My hair and makeup were beautifully done by the incredibly talented Russian artist Anastasia Vavina of Beauty Icon.”
For his wedding day look, Kareem bought his first-ever tuxedo from his friend Jake Mueser. “I’ve always rented them, but I knew that if I was going to buy one, it should be timeless and classic, which is really what Jake specializes in,” shares the groom. “He did an amazing job, and I’m glad I got something that I can wear again.”
One final accessory the couple did need to procure at the last minute? Their wedding bands. “I think it just got lost in the shuffle until Levon, my friend who officiated, asked what the ring plan was,” says Kareem. “We were like, ‘Oh shit, we forgot the rings.’” Luckily, there were options near their venue. “The morning of the wedding, we went to Chinatown and popped into a few shops until Karina found a ring that spoke to her! Coincidentally, the husband and wife who owned the little gold shop had also forgotten to buy rings for their wedding day, so it felt like a good omen,” says the groom.
