Exclusive Images From Inside Idris & Sabrina Elba’s Beautiful Moroccan Wedding

The Marrakesh wedding of Idris Elba and Sabrina Dhowre was a thrilling three-day extravaganza. But, as revealed here by Edward Enninful – a friend and guest of the bride and groom – behind the extraordinary celebrations lies a simple tale as old as time.

On a Friday evening in April, in a courtyard bathed in the warm, orange glow of a Moroccan sunset, I watched as Idris Elba and Sabrina Dhowre were married in front of 200 of their good friends and family. As Sabrina adjusted her Vera Wang gown and Idris paced the riad expectantly in a three-piece Ozwald Boateng suit, every inch the movie star, it occurred to me what a beautiful, symbolic moment this was. As Sabrina had put it to me earlier, “My family is from east Africa and Idris’s is from west Africa, so we thought it would be fun to meet somewhere in between.

“Somewhere in between” has proved to be the strength of this special relationship. The groom’s family hails from Sierra Leone and Ghana (via Hackney), the bride’s from Somalia (via Canada), so they decided to place Africa at the heart of their raucous and romantic three-day wedding festival in Marrakesh. I loved seeing how they had woven their heritage into every aspect of the festivities, sometimes literally. At the party on the eve of the wedding, the groom – as is customary for men from Sierra Leone, where Idris’s father was born – wore the patterned fabric of his family’s tribe, while Sabrina had the same fabric worked into a dress designed by her friend Roland Mouret. Over the course of the celebrations, there were performances from Afrobeats star Davido and a showstopping turn by Somali women doing a traditional buraanbur dance to a song written specially for the couple. It was a wonderfully modern spin on an African wedding.