This Underwater Wedding in Dahab Is the Stuff of Dreams
While many choose to wed at pretentious hotels with all-you-can-eat buffets and open bars, other thrill seeking couples opt for less conventional ways to celebrate their big day. Hussein and Hagar are one of these couples. Hussein who owns a production agency met Hagar, a Cairo real estate agent, in Sinai’s magical little coastal town of Dahab.
“Both of us were certified advanced divers, and constant visitors to Dahab way before we met each other. We met on a random but very special diving trip, and that’s how our love story began,” Hussein tells us. “We weren’t really going for an out-of-the-box wedding, we just wanted to do something that we loved. When we got engaged we wanted to write something on our wedding bands that meant something to us and symbolized our love to one another, so we decided to write ‘buddies for life‘ as to indicate that from this day until forever we would always dive together through low and high tides.”
Hussein and Hagar were not big fans of “big fancy weddings.” They didn’t care about the oh-la-la shenanigans, and they certainly didn’t want to invite hundreds of people that weren’t even that close to them on their special day. “We wanted to have a wedding that actually represented us, so the decision was actually very simple. The sea brought us together, so it’s only natural that we let the sea unite us,” Hussein explains why they decided to have an underwater wedding.
“The hardest part was trying to convince our families to come to the wedding,” Hagar laughs. “We kept the underwater ceremony undercover, but they still complained to us as Dahab was very, very far from Cairo. Luckily, all of our closest friends and family showed up. Not only that, both of our parents dove for the first time to properly join us and it was all that we could ask for.”
Everyone on Dahab’s popular strip was cheering, kissing, whistling and screaming Hussein and Hagar’s names, shouting words like “mabrouk” and such. “It was crazy, the whole thing was, in the best way possible. The people were ecstatic,” Hagar tells us.
“Everyone took pictures with us, kissed us, congratulated us. Love was in the air, and it was perfect. Some of the young Bedouin girls gave us handmade bracelets as a wedding gift which meant the absolute world to us as we know that’s how they earn money,” Hussein says with a smile on his face.
WE SAID THIS: If this doesn’t make you believe in love or the power of Dahab, I don’t know what will. Congratulations, Hussein and Hagar.
