See Inside a Semi-Traditional Afghan Wedding

When we ask newlyweds to think back on what they wanted most for their big day — and we’ve interviewed hundreds of them over the years — the most common response is “For it not to feel like a wedding!” Gathering with old friends and eating mini grilled cheeses in formalwear to celebrate love feels more special these days than ever, even downright miraculous. And the betrothed have never been less attached to the old wedding handbook — or the need to please their great-aunt. So in a flurry of pampas grass and perfectly mismatched-to-match bridesmaid dresses, how do you pull off a non-cookie-cutter affair? For the answers, we decided to interrogate the cool couples whose weddings we would actually want to steal, right down to the tiger-shaped cake toppers.

Here we spoke with Marwa Safi and Ben Borden, a Los Angeles–based couple who struggled in their planning to answer a few questions: Why can’t you plan a wedding in six months? How can a celebration be “just Afghan enough,” in honor of the bride’s heritage? And why does every long green dress on the market look like something you’d wear to a beach resort? Fortunately, they both have an eye — Marwa is a creative producer in the fashion industry, while Ben is a teacher and fine artist. They were able to thread the needle for an intimate, semi-traditional celebration in San Diego for 65 guests just last month that featured Uzbek robes, an Islamic ceremony, and a Mamma Mia moment. 

Marwa: Right off the bat, from the beginning, my gut was telling me, Whoa. This is going to be something different. 

Ben: I was having dinner with some friends at Café Triste in Chinatown in 2023, and I went over to say hi to another friend, who was sitting there with Marwa. He zipped out to have a smoke, and I was at the table with her and it just felt really natural.

Marwa: He had just gotten back from teaching a class at the Royal Academy in Antwerp, and I thought he seemed very interesting. I did something I really hadn’t before, which is ask this friend to pass on my phone number.

Ben: I was like, Really? Wow! She thinks I’m cute? That’s amazing.

Marwa: We went on our first date in Chinatown also, and then he asked me to go to the library at the Art Center in Pasadena, where he also teaches, which I thought was very sweet.

Ben: It was one of those magical L.A. days where it’s really pouring rain, which never happens, and we’re at a library up in the mountains.

Marwa: It felt very sincere from the beginning.

Ben: There was a moment where she said, “You’re my best friend,” and I realized, We’re going to be a team. That sincerity really moved me.

Marwa: As we got to know each other, it felt like, Okay, I could do this forever. 

Marwa: He proposed at Sea Ranch, on the beach, just the two of us. This was in October 2024.

It was very sweet and kind of silly, too, because beach proposals are really not us at all.

Ben: I was like, Should I do something clever? Something ironic? On a jumbotron? And I thought, No, let’s go the opposite and go cliché and sincere. I’m going to propose on a beach. Mind you, it’s Northern California, so it’s an epic, foggy, crashing-wave kind of beach.

Marwa: We were both laughing. It was sweet.

Ben: I started getting on my knees and she’s like, What are you doing?!

Marwa: The hardest part from the beginning was deciding if it was going to be an Islamic wedding only, or if it would be mixed in with a white wedding, where I change into a white dress. I knew I wanted it to feel different than traditional Afghan weddings I’ve been to. I wanted it to feel comfortable, easy, fun.

Ben: I didn’t want it to be out-of-control big. Something we could manage.

Marwa: Afghan weddings tend to be drawn out, and there’s a formality I don’t love about them. The bride and groom are normally sitting on a stage, and I wanted to feel like we were at the party, not observing it.

Ben: We talked about having it in Texas — I’m from Corpus Christi — but I have a really small family, just me and my parents‚ and so much of Marwa’s family is in San Diego, including sisters with young children. We figured it would be a lot easier to do it there.

Marwa: I actually really love to plan parties and enjoy the process, so keeping it fun was my main concern the entire time.

Ben: Part of the consideration with a venue was, Is this a place that can help us manage everything? We wanted a place that would help with logistics like furniture and food.

Marwa: When we got engaged, I knew Rancho Valencia in San Diego was where I wanted to do it. It’s this hotel and spa that my sisters and I have been going to for years. We asked what dates they had in April, they sent some options, and that was that. We didn’t look at another location. It has a mixture of indoor and outdoor spaces, and it feels like a Spanish or Italian villa. There’s a beautiful fireplace, the view is stunning, and it doesn’t need a lot.

Ben: Rancho Valencia is one of those old California places where you drive in and you’re like, Wait, where are we going? It feels like being transported somewhere else. We were like, Why does it need to take longer than a few months to get this planned? It’s to Marwa’s credit that she was like, We could get this done. We don’t need to drag this on. Let’s go. We saw this opening at the venue and decided to go for it.

Marwa: I approached the aesthetics the same way I do a photo shoot — I made a creative deck with mood boards, and then a log of the budget and what needed to be done: locations, vendors, photographer. Our flowers were by Native Poppy in San Diego. I wanted it to feel like a warm spring day: light pinks and greens, a few pops of berry, lush but in muted tones. My favorite part was the archway, with beautiful hanging flowers, that we put behind our seats, along with a six-sided candelabra that Ben designed. Having his designs in the mix was really special. But a lot of the aesthetics came from my mom. My parents were in Afghanistan in the months leading up to the wedding, and I sent my mom the deck, too. A lot of the things we used came from Afghanistan, like the table the ceremony took place at, the lapis bowls, these tapestries.

Ben: Marwa’s mom got me a traditional Uzbek robe in Kabul. We WhatsApped for months leading up to this, and she was sending me different robe ideas and colors. I knew I wanted some variation on brown. A month before, we went to this menswear store here in L.A. called Mohawk, where our friend Carl is the menswear buyer. I was like, Help! He got me a suit. We had a plan to do an Issey Miyake shirt underneath, and pretty much the night before, Marwa’s mom vetoed that, which I think was the right move. I had brought a Dries tie with a muddy floral print that I really liked, and Marwa’s dad was like, “You’re wearing it with one of my white shirts.” We did this spontaneously.

Marwa: Green is the traditional color of Afghan weddings, and I knew from the beginning I wanted to do something semi-traditional. It’s really hard finding a green dress; a lot of them were almost matronly or looked like vacation dresses. The one I wore is actually Ralph Lauren, a real American heritage brand, which I found at Neiman Marcus in L.A. It felt elegant, and I liked the silhouette a lot. My mom found a traditional Uzbek robe in Afghanistan, and she got parts of it custom-embroidered. All the jewelry was vintage pieces she found and took to craftsmen and had refurbished. Together, we designed how we wanted these pieces to look as a cohesive set. I knew I wanted braids in my hair, because I was inspired by this picture of Kirsty Hume getting married in the ’90s in Scotland in a headpiece with long braids. I did my hair and makeup myself. I had a vague Penélope Cruz reference in mind, but then, I always do.

Ben: We walked into the ceremony together, while Marwa’s little brother Zak was behind us holding the Quran over our heads. I converted a little over six months ago. I’ve been around Islam a lot of my life; I worked at the Islamic Studies library in college, and I’ve had Muslim friends. I did it in San Diego with Marwa’s family, and it was really moving — it felt like being welcomed into her family as well.

Marwa: Imam Saif is the imam at the mosque I grew up going to, and he was the one who converted Ben. The morning of the conversion, we talked with him and really liked the things he was saying to us about marriage and love. It had to be him.

Ben: We sat down at the head of the table and there was a beautiful tableau in front of us, with a bowl of honey and a mirror facing us, which in the history of this ceremony, would be the first time you saw your husband or wife. Marwa’s brother, uncle, and father, and my dad and the imam were sitting around this table.

Marwa: The imam gets started with a sermon, talking about the beauty of love and what marriage means in Islam. Then he asked me if I accept, and I said I do. He asked Ben, and he said he did. And that was it!

Ben: All the weddings I’d ever been to were Christian, or even at a courthouse, with the bride and groom facing away from the audience, whereas here everyone was sitting looking at us, which was very emotional and actually pretty intense.

Marwa: I’m really glad we did it the way we did — right before the party — because some people do it the night before. Doing them together heightened the emotion that was going around, the love I felt for everyone who came.

Ben: There was a cocktail hour, which I thought was an interesting nod to the two cultures. I don’t think you would traditionally think about a cocktail hour living happily alongside a Muslim wedding.

Marwa: We had a cheeseboard and appetizers. There were live musicians playing traditional Afghan instruments — a tabla player named Hashmat and a rubab player named Haji Sadiq. The music is really melodic, and it felt nice in the background. The hotel has an amazing restaurant, so it was catered by the chef on-site. For dinner, we started with this delicious English pea risotto, then we had a farm salad, then people could choose between a filet, a salmon, or a vegetarian option. We finished with a crème brûlée chocolate cake.

Ben: My biggest concern was, Is everyone going to be satiated, is there going to be enough food? There were no speeches, but we went around the tables and said thank you and hi to everyone individually.

Marwa: My favorite part of the night was the dancing.

Ben: My mom is a musician and really rhythmically in touch. She had never danced to Afghan music, but she just got up and danced with Marwa’s aunt and killed it.

Marwa: She picked up on the Afghan rhythm and the foot and hand movements immediately, which is not that easy. Everyone was so touched.

Ben: It really helped the evening kick off.  Everyone was jaw-on-the-floor excited that she did that. We did a little bit of a first dance, but I’m a horrible dancer, so people came in and started dancing pretty soon after it looked like we needed help. After the traditional musicians, we had DJ NP.

Marwa: He took over and played mostly Afghan, Persian, and Arabic music. We were outside dancing, and then it started raining, which was kind of a shock. We weren’t expecting the rain, especially in San Diego at the end of April. Everyone was pretty loose at that point, so it was fun — I had always said I wanted my wedding to feel like a Mamma Mia movie.

Ben: It rained at both of Marwa’s sisters’ weddings, so we would have been offended if it didn’t rain, honestly. We went inside and the DJ re-set up all his equipment, and by then we were begging him to play some American music, and he promptly put on Daft Punk and Eurodance, which was even better. That’s how we wrapped up, with the venue kicking us out.

Marwa: No one wanted to leave, which I loved. We went back to our hotel room with our friends and opened a bottle of Champagne. And then that was it!

Ben: It was just so much love, being welcomed into Marwa’s life by her family, and my parents and her parents coming together. All these moments of happy people.

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