Sarib & Sana

We’re happily married now since December 31st 2019. My husband, Sarib and I matched on Minder(Now Salams) on March 2nd 2019 (we have started the tradition of celebrating our Salamsiversary every 2nd of March along with a wedding anniversary. Which means two anniversary gifts every year!). He was in California and I was in New Jersey at that time. He had been using Minder(Now Salams) for about 2-3 months and I was a week old on the app. I guess we lucked out quicker. Alhamdulilah. His first message to me was “The chai caught my attention.” This was because I had mentioned on my profile how I enjoy having chai with my mom every evening and my husband is an ex-chai connoisseur (that’s another story haha). But anyway, we clicked pretty early on and after about 3 days of lots of exciting Salams texting back and forth, we graduated to Instagram exchange.

There were some quick short phone calls here and there, sometimes to just hear how we really sound or sometimes to hear each other laughing. I must say, my husband was the first and only guy I met that had the skill to crack me up on a text message joke and I would literally be crying of laughter. My mom got really concerned at one point. Haha. Anyway, about a month and half from the day we matched, he flew to NJ to meet my family and I for the first time. It was one amazing day. I cant forget our first eye contact. After lots of convincing to my mom, he took me out to Central Park, NY.

He promised my mom we wont be longer than 3 hours and I was very impressed of how keenly he kept track of time because he didnt want to upset my mom. Our first meetup made us even more sure about each other. This followed up into his next visit to NJ on my birthday in July with his sisters. He then made a surprise visit in October, gathered some of my close friends and family and proposed to me where we had first met, in Central Park! Then in November we had our Nikkah date fixed via a skype call between my family and his family who were in Pakistan.

However, as time got closer we thought it’ll be too hard for us to be in a Nikkah yet not be able to live with each other (in Pakistan culture, a couple is culturally ok to live with each other after “Rukhsati” which is an event when the girl is announced to leave with the groom). So we decided we’ll combine the rukhsati in. Thankfully none of the families had an issue with it and everyone was very joyously supportive. We are so grateful we made that decision or else this quarantine would have been a nightmare, away from each other! I have now moved to San Francisco, California with him. We have a nice apartment that at the moment we’re decorating together. We very often talk about how that one right swipe changed our lives. Alhamdulilah.