Wedding photographer Elaine arrives in El Minya for Egyptian wedding
After wandering round Cairo taking photos of interesting people and places – including a camel ride round the pyramids in Giza – my journey to Afram & Mona’s wedding takes me by train from Cairo to El Minya. Tickets sell out in advance but I was lucky to be rescued by a student from Sinai who happened to be studying at the university in El Minya itself so despite being told that there were no tickets at all, we boarded the second best train in First Class, claimed 2 seats and paid on the train itself!
Despite extremely dirty rain windows managed to get a few nice pics of the palm-lined little river that kept us company throughout alongside the train tracks.
I’m sitting in a top floor restaurant-bar with glass walls on 3 sides, looking out over the river Nile at night.It could almost be any river at night with a string of roadside amber lights reflecting into the water at regular intervals, but for the constant hum of traffic and manic horn-tooting as the drivers weave in and out precariously – clumsy as feet with shoes on in the shifting sand beneath them. Its cooler up here as my single room faces the untidy jumble of services into a tiny square of internal fresh air that seems to come only from a Mummy’s tomb.
Mona & Afram actually just did their civil ceremony tonight (while I sat in their family home doing emails!) – the paperwork only for their wedding really – without anyone there and dressed in jeans, but tomorrow have their Henna party, so the wedding celebrations proper start to get underway then, with their Orthodox Church wedding the day after, at 8pm.I’ll be covering it all, from start to finish, so that will be exciting!
View of River Nile from top of King Akhenaton Hotel in El Minya
Morning dawns to reveal the Nile in a totally different light: a hazy fat line split in the middle with a mile long island, complete with cows grazing and a little lake within itself too.The opposite side has a narrow fertile strip filled with banana trees and the odd palm, above which rise well-eroded mountain rocks in faded pink and blue hues.
Egyptian breakfast of soup of chewy brown beans, tomatoes, cucumber, cold potatoes mashed with fresh parsley, cheeses soft and hard, (had to pass on the boiled egg, bread, jam and spreading cheese and cold meat) and the ever present Egyptian tea will keep even the neediest body going all day.Time to wander around and explore, before the henna party gets going late this afternoon
See pics from that wedding here: http://weddingphotos-video.co.uk/blog/?p=535
If you are getting married anywhere in Egypt and would love to have your person UK-based wedding photographer who understands multicultural weddings and has 13 years experience as a wedding photographer – 6 as an international wedding photographer – then contact Elaine! Visit our international wedding page too for more ideas on exotic weddings abroad.