Pakistani wedding wizards share most bizarre client stories

A sunlit candid of bride, stylist and fashion editor Mehek Saeed on her nikah, March 27, 2019. (Photo courtesy: Ali Khurshid)
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Updated 10 December 2019
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Pakistani wedding wizards share most bizarre client stories

  • Arab News gets the scoop from high-end wedding photographers and planners
  • Number one request from brides, grooms, and guests is “make me thin”

ISLAMABAD: Weddings are Pakistan's jam. It is what it is, and we own it with lots of love and some eye-rolls. We take our weddings very seriously and the people who put them together for us have no easy climb ahead of them.

There is a list of people who bring to life dream weddings of couples – or their parents – and no one ranks higher on it than photographers and event planners. What is demanded of them is often magical skills. Arab News spoke to some of these magicians and asked them about their most memorable client stories.

Qamar Anwar, who shoots weddings in Islamabad and Dubai and has been a photographer for nearly a decade, said the number one request he gets from everyone is “make me thin.”

“So many things go down at weddings, and some I have seen multiple times. Full-on fights during joota chupai. I have seen grooms storming off the stage and not coming back,” Anwar told Arab News over the phone, referring to a South Asian custom in which sisters and friends of the bride hide the groom’s shoes until he pays them money.




A bride showcases her mehndi, Dec. 7, 2019.  (Photo courtesy: Qamar Anwar) 

He remembers one peculiar situation in which the client was angry that he took pictures at all.

“At a recent wedding, I was hired by the groom’s side. After the event, when the pictures were released, his sisters were extremely angry at me and demanded to know why I took pictures of the bride!” Anwar laughed.

“I was blown away if not her pictures, then whose would I be taking! But they argued that they had called me to only take pictures of their side, quite literally them and the groom, and no one from the bride’s side, including the bride herself.”

Ali Khurshid, who has been a photographer for 14 years and had his work featured in Times Magazine, said that at some weddings the bride and groom “just get it.”




Twirls and smiles on the nikah day, March 27, 2019. (Photo courtesy: Ali Khurshid)
 

“I am able to get in there and do all the weird stuff like hiding behind corners, laying on the ground, and they respect and understand your work and let it happen,” he told Arab News in a phone conversation.

Khurshid’s wedding photography has taken him all over the world – from the US to Iceland and Norway – but one of his most memorable weddings allowed him to enter India.

“I must have shot three to four thousand events and sometimes things do not go as imagined, you plan so many things, but come to the day things happen as they will,” Khurshid said as he shared the story.

“I have always wanted to go to India, see my ancestral cities and home,” he said.

At one wedding he took a photograph of India's ambassador to Pakistan. Apparently, the ambassador was happy about it and invited him to his office. As he arrived the diplomat stamped in his passport entry for four cities of his choice, “no questions asked. It was pretty amazing!”

Taha Memon who leads Dawat, a wedding planning, management, and catering company based in Karachi, laughed as he remembered the craziest demand from his client.

“One time, a client told me that he wanted to come in on a train like Shah Rukh Khan famously did in the song ‘Chal Chaiyan, Chaiyan.' ”




Taha Memon of Dawat and Sona on their mehndi, Sept. 4, 2019. (Photo courtesy: Dawat)

Another event that stayed in his memory was carefully prepared on a beach.
 
“We started our work, got everything ready, it was all custom bamboo work, we made lounges, stalls and even custom chairs and bamboo hangings for this luau theme,” he said.

But suddenly a large wave annihilated all their efforts!  “Everything was ready on time, sleepless nights, my team worked really hard, and then a huge wave came in and took everything.”

They started to swim to recover all they could. They panicked when the client arrived. “He saw us wading out and making this for him, and he was generous and appreciative of our efforts. It was an unexpected occurrence, one of the most memorable and wildest things I have dealt with.”

Shazreh Khalid of Zareen and Shazreh Khalid events in Lahore, who has been a cornerstone of high-end, stunning weddings and events, told Arab News of a request from which she had to discourage her client.

“I once had a client who wanted to enter her mehndi on a real elephant. She wanted me to get in contact with the Lahore Zoo and make it happen! Of course, I had to convince her to change her mind, but she had so much conviction and was dead serious.”




Sports reporter and cricket commentator Zainab Abbas on her mehndi day organized by Zareen and Shazreh Khalid Events, Nov. 30, 2019. (Photo courtesy: Zareen and Shazreh Khalid Events)

While she was proud of her dissuading skills in the elephant case, she is far more proud of another event, an enormous wedding that did take place.

“One event that I’m extremely proud of was Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s son Zain Qureshi’s walima in Multan. It was a 15,000 people event that my team and I pulled off meticulously. My clients were super happy and really acknowledged our hard work.”

Fahd Nassr of The Social Squad also shared a memorable intercontinental story.




An illustration made by Ayesha Haroon of The Social Squad featuring the bride and groom who ordered pink chum chums for their wedding in New York, July 14, 2019. (Photo courtesy: The Social Squad)

“It was a multicultural wedding, the groom was from India, the bride was from Pakistan, and the wedding was in New York. It was about six months of planning and just a few hours before the flight she brought it to our knowledge that we would need to bring pink chum chums because her fiancé is obsessed with them and she wanted to have a whole pyramid of chum chums in the middle of the dance floor,” Fahd said referring to sweat treats often featured in wedding boxes.

“We got that arranged, got it sorted out, got a full load of chum chums with us. As soon as we landed in Istanbul for our transit, she told us about her love for mango lassi.” And the mangoes had to come from Pakistan.

“So now we're three hours away from our flight to fly to New York, and I am sitting at the Istanbul airport calling Pakistan and we are trying to get 30 kilograms of mangoes from Karachi to New York, with the event being just five days away! We made sure it got done and mango lassi was prepared for the event on time.”


Pakistan’s February inflation drops to more than nine-year low at 1.5 percent

Updated 03 March 2025
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Pakistan’s February inflation drops to more than nine-year low at 1.5 percent

  • This is down from a multi-decade high of around 40 percent in May 2023
  • Consumer price index stood at 2.4 percent in Jan. and 23.1 percent in Feb. 2024

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s monthly inflation dropped to 1.5 percent in February on a year-on-year basis, the country’s statistics bureau said on Monday, which was the lowest in more than nine years.
The consumer price index (CPI) inflation stood at 2.4 percent in the month of January and 23.1 percent in Feb. 2024, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
On a month-on-month basis, it decreased by 0.8 percent in February as compared to an increase of 0.2 percent in the previous month and no change in February 2024. This was down from a multi-decade high of around 40 percent in May 2023.
“The lowest inflation last time was nine years and five months ago in September 2015, when it reached 1.3 percent,” Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said at a press conference on Monday, hailing a decline in policy rate to 12 percent.
The commodities whose prices increased from corresponding month of the previous year included pulses, potatoes, fresh fruits, butter, honey, milk powder, meat, vegetable, ghee, fish, milk products, cooking oil and sugar, according to the PBS.
The items whose prices decreased in Feb. included onions, tomatoes, wheat flour, tea, eggs, rice, bakery and confectionary items, and chicken.
 


Pakistan Stock Exchange sheds 1,200 points amid uncertainty over IMF loan talks

Updated 03 March 2025
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Pakistan Stock Exchange sheds 1,200 points amid uncertainty over IMF loan talks

  • The benchmark KSE-100 index closed at 111,986.88 and went down by 1.12 percent from the previous day’s close
  • Analyst says foreign outflows, weak rupee, lower global crude prices played a catalyst role in bearish close

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) saw a significant decline of 1,200 points on Monday, currency traders and analysts said, attributing the slump to uncertainty over the outcome of Islamabad’s talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a $1 billion tranche.
The benchmark KSE-100 index dropped by 1,264.78 points, or 1.12 percent, to 111,986.88 points, compared to Friday’s close of 113,251.66.
The development came as an IMF team arrived in Pakistan for the first review of a $7 billion loan program Islamabad secured in September.
“Foreign outflows, weak rupee, lower global crude oil prices and uncertainty over outcome of Pakistan-IMF talks this week played a catalyst role in the bearish close,” Ahsan Mehanti, CEO of Arif Habib Commodities, told Arab News.
Pakistan’s ARY News channel reported that the IMF was demanding action against tax evasion in Pakistan’s real estate sector.
“The IMF pushed for action against those misdeclaring property values,” ARY News reported, saying the government had assured the global lender it would activate the Real Estate Regulatory Authority.
Naveed Nadeem, a senior equity trader at Topline Securities Limited, said the negative sentiment at the market was driven by the lack of a positive trigger, Engro earnings falling short of expectations and shorter trading hours.
“Key stocks contributing to the downturn included ENGROH, UBL, MCB, MTL, and PPL, which together accounted for a drop of 731 points in the index,” he said.
“Despite the downturn, overall market activity saw 207 million shares traded, with a total turnover of Rs 11.8 billion.”


Woman suicide bomber kills troop, injures four others in Balochistan attack

Updated 03 March 2025
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Woman suicide bomber kills troop, injures four others in Balochistan attack

  • No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion is likely to fall on the Baloch Liberation Army separatist group
  • The BLA has previously used woman fighters to carry out suicide attacks against Pakistani security forces and Chinese nationals in Pakistan

QUETTA: A paramilitary troop was killed and four others injured after a woman suicide bomber hit a convoy of the Frontier Corps (FC) paramilitary force in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, a local administration official said on Monday.
The attack took place in Balochistan’s Kalat district on Monday afternoon, when the FC convoy was en route to security forces’ mess from the FC Fort on N-25 Quetta-Karachi highway, according to Kalat Deputy Commissioner Bilal Shabbir.
“A female suicide bomber struck the security forces convoy killing one soldier of the paramilitary Frontier Corps on the spot and injuring four others who were shifted to hospital,” DC Shabbir told Arab News.
“The female suicide bomber was standing outside the FC fort located at the highway and detonated herself when they were moving from the fort to the security forces’ mess in Kalat.”
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion is likely to fall on the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), which has previously used woman fighters in its ranks to carry out suicide attacks against Pakistani security forces and Chinese nationals over the last few years.
In 2022, Shari Baloch, a woman suicide bomber linked to the BLA, carried out a suicide attack that ripped through a passenger van, killing three Chinese nationals and a Pakistani in the southern port city of Karachi, according to Pakistani authorities.
In Nov. last year, Pakistani officials arrested a woman among three suspects involved in a deadly suicide bombing, also claimed by the BLA, that killed two Chinese nationals and a Pakistani man outside the Karachi airport on Oct. 6, 2024.
The BLA is one of the most prominent separatist groups, which mainly operates in Balochistan but has targeted Chinese nationals in the neighboring Sindh province as well.
Balochistan has for years been the scene of an insurgency, where separatist groups have frequently attacked police and security forces as well as civilians and foreigners they see as “outsiders” in the resource-rich region, where China has been building a deep-sea port in Gwadar on the Arabian Sea and has made huge investments under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
The separatists accuse Islamabad of exploiting the province’s natural resources. Successive Pakistani governments deny the allegations and say they have prioritized Balochistan’s development through investments in health, education and infrastructure projects.
 


US actions may set polio eradication back in Pakistan and Afghanistan, WHO says

Updated 03 March 2025
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US actions may set polio eradication back in Pakistan and Afghanistan, WHO says

  • WHO works with groups such as UNICEF and Gates Foundation to end polio
  • The planned withdrawal of the United States from WHO has impacted efforts

LONDON: The eradication of polio as a global health threat may be delayed unless US funding cuts – potentially totaling hundreds of millions of dollars over several years – are reversed, a senior World Health Organization official has warned.
The WHO works with groups such as UNICEF and the Gates Foundation to end polio. The planned withdrawal of the United States from WHO has impacted efforts, including stopping collaboration with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last week, UNICEF’s polio grant was terminated as the State Department cut 90 percent of USAID’s grants worldwide to align aid with President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ policy.
In total, the partnership is missing $133 million from the US that was expected this year, said Hamid Jafari, director of the polio eradication program for the WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean region. The area includes two countries where a wild form of polio is spreading: Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“If the funding shortfall continues, it may potentially delay eradication, it may lead to more children getting paralyzed,” he said, adding that the longer it took to end polio, the more expensive it would be.
He said the partners were working out ways to cope with the funding shortage, which will largely impact personnel and surveillance, but hoped the US would return to funding the fight against polio.
“We are looking at other funding sources ... to sustain both the priority staff and priority activities,” he said.
He said vaccination campaigns in both Afghanistan and Pakistan would be protected.
UNICEF did not respond to requests for comment, and a spokesperson for the Gates Foundation reiterated that no foundation could fill the gap left by the US Saudi Arabia gave $500 million to polio eradication last week.
The partnership already faces a $2.4 billion shortfall to 2029, as it accepted last year that it would take longer, and cost more, to eradicate the disease than hoped.


Saudi Arabia launches Ramadan iftar, dates distribution program in Pakistan

Updated 03 March 2025
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Saudi Arabia launches Ramadan iftar, dates distribution program in Pakistan

  • The program aims to support tens of thousands of deserving Pakistani people throughout the holy fasting month of Ramadan
  • Fasting during Ramadan is one of five pillars of Islam, wherein Muslims abstain from food and drink from sunrise till sunset

ISLAMABAD: Saudi Arabia has launched the King Salman bin Abdulaziz Iftar and Dates Distribution Program in Pakistan for the month of Ramadan, the Pakistani religious affairs ministry said on Monday, with the program aiming to support tens of thousands of deserving people.
Fasting during Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam, wherein Muslims abstain from food and drink from sunrise till sunset for a month. The Islamic lunar month will begin in March.
This is followed by the sighting of the new moon and is marked by Eid Al-Fitr, a religious holiday and celebration that is observed by Muslims across the world.
The iftar and date distribution program was inaugurated by the Pakistan’s Religious Affairs Minister Chaudhry Salik Hussain and Saudi Ambassador Nawaf bin Saeed Al-Malki.
“The aim of this program is to care for poor and needy families, widows, and orphans, to provide them with opportunities for joy and happiness, to meet their needs, and to effectively assist in alleviating the hardships of impoverished and extremely needy families by providing essential food items,” the Saudi ambassador was quoted as saying by the Pakistani ministry.
“Under this program, which symbolizes friendship and brotherhood from the Saudi government and people, 20 tons of dates will be distributed to 40,000 deserving individuals, while 30,000 individuals will benefit from the Iftar program.”
The program for fasting individuals and the distribution of dates is part of the initiatives directed by King Salman for implementation in Pakistan and several other countries, according to the Saudi ambassador. It will be held throughout the month of Ramadan in all provinces of Pakistan.
On the occasion, Religious Affairs Minister Hussain thanked the Kingdom for its continuous assistance to those in need in Pakistan.
“These gifts symbolize the bond of brotherhood and goodwill between the people of Saudi Arabia, its government, its wise leadership, and the people of Pakistan,” he said.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia enjoy strong trade, defense and brotherly relations. The Kingdom is home to over 2.7 million Pakistani expatriates, serving as the top destination for remittances for the cash-strapped South Asian country.
Last week, Saudi Arabia gifted Pakistan 100 tons of dates ahead of the holy month of Ramadan. The consignment was handed over by Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador Nawaf bin Said Al-Maliki along with Abdullah Al-Baqami, director of the King Salman Humanitarian Aid & Relief Center (KSrelief) at a ceremony held at the Saudi embassy in Islamabad.