Sharifa and Jafar's Cop Cot Ceremony in Central Park
Sharifa and Jafar met through mutual friends in 2019, but they only saw each other in passing for the next few years. The thing that actually got them together was a 2022 Instagram DM. Jafar was in LA for work, slid into her DMs to hang out, and they spent the next week inseparable. He was back on a plane to London four days later, but they were already a couple by then.
For the next year and a half, they made the 5,500 miles between LA and London work. Constant flights, time zones, every minute counted. Jafar moved to LA in 2023, they moved to London together in 2024, and he proposed that June. The wedding came together quickly after.
For the ceremony itself, they wanted small and quiet. Just their parents and Sharifa's sister Alia. Cop Cot, the rustic wooden gazebo tucked into the southeast corner of Central Park, was the right call. Trees on all sides, away from tourists, big enough for a handful of people who matter.
A Cop Cot wedding for two best friends
Cop Cot sits around 60th and 5th, just a block from the Plaza but feeling like the middle of the woods. Quiet, private, and the right size for a wedding that's about a handful of people, not a crowd.
Alia held the rings and handed them over during the exchange. Jafar's dad, 87 and going strong, flew in for the day. Sharifa's father and Jafar share a long-running family joke of a bromance that started over dinner in LA before Sharifa was even there to introduce them, and the room knew it.
They wrote their own vows and read the first passage of Kahlil Gibran's "On Marriage." Afterward, they headed back out into the city for a film-camera shoot inspired by 1980s Hong Kong wedding photos. Full wedding attire, ordinary Manhattan blocks, every corner its own backdrop.
