Two of a kind: a couple bond over their similar pasts and throw a “disco magic” wedding

On a mild day in September 2015, interior decorator Gabriella Nassief Borg arrived home to the Little Italy apartment she shared with two roommates to find a strange man in a suit on her couch. “None of my friends at the time were really in the professional world,” Borg says. “I thought, ‘Who is this young guy in a suit?’” He turned out to be Mehmet Shah, CFO at StackAdapt, a friend of her roommate’s who was there to help with taxes. “I had just come from my work as an accountant,” he says, “so every day, day in and day out, was suits.”

Despite Shah’s buttoned-up attire, Borg was instantly smitten. “I basically had a crush on him the moment I saw him,” she says. The two continued to bump into one another at house parties, but Shah didn’t pick up on Borg’s interest until he noticed her admiring his comic book collection. Six months after their initial encounter, they went on their first date.

Gabriella Nassief Borg's dress featured a custom bow.

After failing to secure a reservation at La Carnitas, the two ended up at Trattoria Taverniti, a quaint Italian red sauce joint with red-checkered tablecloths. “I figured that was as cinematic as it gets, so we might as well make it our first date,” Borg says. At the restaurant, they bonded over their shared experiences as the children of immigrants. Shah’s family hails from Cyprus, while Borg’s mother is Lebanese by way of Suriname and her father is from Malta. The two grew up feeling out of place in predominantly white areas – Borg in Leaside and Shah in Kitchener, then Vancouver. “I hadn’t really dated anyone with that type of background before and it felt really natural,” she says. “There was something really special about the level we seemed to connect on.”

While Borg was attracted to their similarities, Shah fell in love with their differences. “Most of my life up to that point had been about math and business. I wasn’t familiar with going to galleries and museums,” he says. “Gabby was so far outside of the realm of what I knew at the time.” Every year since, they have returned to Trattoria Taverniti to celebrate the place where their love bloomed.

Guests received bottles of Cypriot olive oil from the Shah family.

Shah proposed while on a trip to Cyprus in 2019. The couple had gone on a hike to see the ruins of Bellapais Abbey, an ancient monastery, when they were approached by the photographer Shah had hired. Borg mistook the photographer for a tourist and wanted to move out of the shot – until Shah presented her with the baguette diamond on a gold cigar band they had designed together with jeweller Eden Philippa six months earlier.

They set a date for August 2021, waiting two years before getting married to ensure they had time to enjoy their engagement. They decided to wed in Prince Edward County because, according to Borg, “something about the bustle of the city felt like the wrong energy.” The couple fell for what Borg calls the “ungroomed yet picturesque” qualities of 100 Acre Wood, as well as its Middle Eastern-inspired menu they knew their families would love.

The couple discouraged guests from taking pictures with their phones by distributing disposable cameras.

As an interior decorator, Borg was particular about how her wedding should look and worked with florist Susannah van der Zaag to create “disco magic” with rainbow-coloured pom poms mixed in among the flowers. “Everything started off small and understated and grew to be more extravagant and beautiful and colourful and sparkly,” Borg says. “That’s pretty spot-on because it ended up being a true representation of us.”

The weekend of the wedding, they stayed in an Airbnb with 10 of their closest friends. Before riding a school bus to the venue, the couple exchanged pre-wedding presents; in a cute coincidence, each gave the other a gold-medallion necklace. Borg had Mehmet’s engraved with their wedding date as well as the names of his grandparents in his parents’ handwriting. “There was a lot of ugly crying when she gave that to me,” he says.

100 Acre Wood offered a Middle Eastern-inspired meal.

The couple collaborated with Yondr to secure guests’ phones. Since they were already paying a talented photographer to take professional photos, they figured, why not encourage people to stay in the moment? For impromptu selfies, they placed some 30 disposable cameras around the venue and later included the photos with thank-you cards.

For the couple’s first dance, Borg surprised Shah by enlisting friends to perform their song, Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon.” “We ended up going out to the field and dancing under the moon for our first dance,” Borg says. “It was kind of surreal. There were a lot of times where I felt like I was attending this really fun party and forgot it was my wedding.”