From the New York Times Vows Column
by Judy Cantor Navas

As the sun started to set over Miami Beach on March 19, Rita Nakouzi, a consultant on fashion and lifestyle trends, and Touré, a writer and pop culture commentator, were married on the sand behind the Raleigh Hotel in the South Beach area.

"O.K., who's got the bling?" asked the Rev. Joseph Simmons, a Pentecostal minister, who was looking for the couple's wedding bands. Also called Reverend Run, he is best known as a member of the pioneering rap group
Run-DMC. The crowd of 120 included his brother, the hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons; the CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien; and members of Miss Nakouzi's family, who had flown in from Beirut, Lebanon, where the bride was born.

Cultures melded as the couple jumped over a broomstick, an African-American tradition symbolizing the leap into a new life, then walked off to their reception where the sequined bra of a belly dancer sparkled as she performed
with a sword. The guests ate tabbouleh and lobster. Gift bags contained a CD, heavy on Nina Simone and Stevie Wonder, and a T-shirt printed with the Arabic word for love.

"We fit very well together," said Touré, a correspondent for CNN and a contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine. "She's somebody who can go with me from a 50 Cent concert to a Toni Morrison reading and be equally
comfortable in both places."

The couple met more than four years ago at the Limelight, the former Chelsea nightclub, where Lenny Kravitz was shooting a music video. "I don't even like Lenny Kravitz," said Touré, 34, who uses only one name. "I don't know
what I was doing there." But soon he spotted Miss Nakouzi, whom he assumed was Indian.

He introduced himself and told her, "It's funny I'm meeting you now because I'm reading 'Midnight's Children,' " the Salman Rushdie book.

"That's great," she replied. "But I'm not Indian."

Miss Nakouzi, now 29, said she was not turned off. "Here was a guy who was trying to tell me he was intelligent," she said. "Most men aren't trying to prove to you they're smart in their first comment." Touré was embarrassed
but undaunted. He circled around for another attempt.

"I want your cellphone number, your work number, your address, your e-mail," he said.

Miss Nakouzi was impressed by his audacity, she recalled. "I thought he had the most beautiful eyes. And then I thought, 'He looks like he's 17. I'm not interested, but he's cute.' " Nevertheless, she wrote her number down. He
called a few days later.

He earned more points on their first date when instead of arranging to meet her somewhere, he made the effort to come by to pick her up. "If you've dated enough in New York you become jaded, and you don't expect much from
men," said Miss Nakouzi, who at 11 moved with her mother from Beirut to Connecticut and who now works in Manhattan for PromoStyl, a Paris-based fashion, design and lifestyle forecasting agency.

"Rita's very calm most of the time," Touré said. "She has standards; she wouldn't just go for anything, she demands integrity from me. And she 'gets' me, for the most part."

Touré grew up in Boston, attending Milton Academy and playing at what he described as a "ghetto tennis club." He left Emory University in his junior year for New York, having decided to become a writer "determined to expand
the complexity of the discussion of black people." He refers to his novel "Soul City" (Little, Brown, 2004) as a kind of African-American magical realism.

"I don't really view the world with race in mind," Miss Nakouzi said. "When I first saw him I wasn't like 'That's a cute black guy.' That was a huge discussion between us in the way we viewed the world." She added, "I think
we've both opened our eyes to different ways of looking at things."

They also began traveling the world together, something they both enjoy. After a vacation in Brazil in 2002 they started living together in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Later, at a writers' conference in Jamaica, he introduced
her to the crowd as the woman he was going to marry.

After the couple became engaged in September 2003, Miss Nakouzi said she and Touré had "an interesting conversation" about having children. "Touré said, 'You really need to know African-American culture because your kids will be black.' I said, 'Well, you should know about Lebanese culture because your kids will be Lebanese.' "

They took a trip to Beirut.

"It's different dating someone from another country until you go there and feel their country and their air," Touré said. "I saw people who meant a lot to her, saw the city she was born in, learned about customs she grew up
valuing. I understood more about her and about true hospitality." He even impressed her family by learning some Arabic phrases.

At the wedding Miss Nakouzi wore a goddess-style gown from Carolina Herrera's spring collection. With flowers in her dark hair, the bride reminded one of Maria Callas.

Afterward, at the outdoor reception, which was lighted by tiki torches and blanketed in music by the New York D.J. Mark Ronson, the just-married couple hit the floor to the song "Milkshake," by the hip-hop artist Kelis. Later,
the bride and bridegroom took turns shimmying with the belly dancer.

The couple's wedding program featured a page titled "Tomayto. Tomahto," on which the couple had listed some of their defining characteristics.

On the bride's side of the ledger were Blahniks, Real Madrid football, vegetarian. The bridegroom listed Nikes, Da Yankees, carnivore.

"They are different," said the writer and filmmaker Nelson George, Touré's best man. "That's why it's going to work."