A Nile wedding, and a business built on doing what few can pull off

South African travel doyenne, Cecelia Amory and I met in 2009, when she invited me – with a plus-one – to Egypt on an exclusive press trip.
I mentioned I was engaged (and had been for a while), but hadn’t made any wedding plans. Her response: why not get married in Egypt? Within days, she’d taken charge and was arranging our wedding on the Nile.
The 10-day trip covered the length of the country – from Abu Simbel to Alexandria – with a wedding in the shadow of Luxor Temple.
Luxor, known as the world’s greatest open-air museum, boasts a Sofitel Winter Palace that once served as a winter retreat for the Egyptian royal family. It was here that “Death on the Nile” author Agatha Christie played bridge with Howard Carter, the archaeologist who discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb.
People thought we were insane. While the Nile is a source of life for Egyptians, marrying on water is considered bad luck by traditionalists. A marriage begun on water, the belief goes, will never last.
It didn’t bother us.
Cecelia rallied the troops. One person smuggled flowers, glasses and a wedding album in her suitcase. Her daughters were our flower girls.
Our fellow travellers stood in as guests.
My aunt Nicky represented the family; the boat’s owner, Mohamed El‑Shabrawy, gave me away.
A Coptic priest blessed our Christian-Jewish union.

From left: Georgina Crouth, Mohamed ElShabrawy, Shane Crouth, and Cecelia Amory.

The groom broke a glass and a fiddler struck up Hava Nagila.
Egyptian broadcast media came to report on these strange South Africans, determined to marry on the Nile.
We’re still married.
In the years since, Egypt has seen a surge in Nile cruises and floating venues for weddings, thanks in no small part to the efforts of people like Cecelia who have led tourism to the country.
Our story encapsulates what At Last Travel Design does: the perfectly personal, the wonderfully unexpected, precisely executed.
Cecelia started her career in travel, on the ground as an SAA airport desk agent. She moved through reservations and British Airways, and developed a taste for complex itineraries at Barrick Airlines, where her Portuguese language skills were prized assets.
As General Sales Manager of EgyptAir in South Africa, she launched Egypt Day in 1994 and built relationships that took her back more than 60

times. Decades on, across major sporting events and luxury travel forums that took her around the world, she has the inside track on how to open doors and deliver what others can’t.
I’m a journalist at heart: food critic, wine writer, consumer reporter, a business and travel journalist. I’ve covered the world and the businesses behind it, and spent many years in newsrooms. Time in public relations taught me how experiences and opinions are shaped.
When my family emigrated, Cecelia and I decided to build something together, drawing on her expertise and network and my journalism, commercial instinct and foothold in Europe.
So, At Last operates from both South Africa and the UK. We open doors, rooms, tables and experiences. We started by doing something we were told couldn’t be done – and we’ve built our business the same way.

Georgina Crouth
Co-founder