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Shehryar Aziz 26 Years, Kashmiri Groom

Shehryar is a cybersecurity analyst working remotely for a Singapore-based firm — his entire career has been self-built through certifications, GitHub contributions, and competitive hacking on platforms like HackTheBox, where he currently holds a rank in the top 500 globally. He never completed a formal CS degree (he dropped out of a Rawalpindi university in second year to pursue certifications full time) but now earns more than most of his degree-holding peers. He is aware this sounds impressive on paper and deliberately does not lead with it in conversation. He would rather be known for his dry wit, his obsessive chai-brewing rituals, and his habit of reading one book a week. He is from Mirpur AJK, visits his family monthly, and sends a fixed portion of his income home every month regardless of expenses. Privately devout, he prays, fasts, and reads Quran regularly but considers faith a personal matter and not a performance.

Noor ul Huda 27 Years, Awan Bride

Ayesha is a development economist working with the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund in Islamabad on rural household income analysis. She graduated from LUMS with a distinction in Economics and won a competitive fellowship to complete a master’s at the University of Edinburgh. She returned to Pakistan on purpose her thesis was on agricultural income diversification in southern Punjab and she wanted to do the policy work that came after the research, not just write about it from abroad. She is from Narowal originally, comes from a conservative but educated family, and wears hijab by choice rather than family pressure. She is intensely analytical about almost everything once, apparently, she built a spreadsheet to evaluate holiday routes — but she is also warm, prone to laughing at herself, and genuinely interested in people. She is learning to cook properly (with moderate success), runs 5km three times a week, and is re-reading the complete works of Intizar Husain.

Imran Shahzad 37 Years, Warraich Groom

Imran is a retired army captain (served 12 years, left as Captain due to a knee injury sustained during a training exercise) who now runs a successful security consultancy firm in Lahore. He lost his wife to breast cancer four years ago; they had two children together — a daughter aged 11 and a son aged 8. He has been raising them with the help of his mother and two sisters and describes the last four years as the hardest and most clarifying of his life. He is not looking for someone to replace their mother, he is honest about that with anyone he speaks to but he believes his children deserve a complete family again, and he deserves companionship and partnership. He is structured, disciplined, and deeply protective, but those who know him well describe him as the kind of man who cries at his daughter’s school play and stays up all night when either child is unwell. He is financially very stable, owns his home, and has set up education funds for both children. He still exercises daily, though the knee limits him to cycling and swimming.

Omer Khalil 27 Years, Tarar Groom

Omer is a sports physiotherapist and strength conditioning coach who works with two provincial cricket teams and runs a private rehab clinic in Sialkot. He studied physiotherapy at Riphah International University and then completed a postgraduate diploma in Sports Medicine in Turkey. He is built like the athletes he works with — disciplined, physically strong, and meticulous about health — but the first thing people notice about him is how relaxed he is in conversation. He is funny in a low-key, observational way, never at anyone’s expense. He is close to his family, has funded his younger brother’s university education, and still plays club-level football on Thursday evenings. He is privately religious — regular in prayer, fasts completely in Ramadan, avoids anything haram — but would describe his practice as ‘trying to be a good Muslim without policing others.’ He owns a small two-bedroom flat that he has decorated himself with surprising taste.

Shahzaib Rafiq Sial 27 Years, Sial Groom

Shahzaib is an architectural designer and urban planner who graduated from NCA Lahore and now works with a Lahore-based architecture firm on civic and educational building projects. He is the kind of person who cannot walk through a city without noticing what is broken and imagining what it could be — the cracked footpath that could be a planted walkway, the abandoned building that could be a community library. He is idealistic about cities in a practical way, not a dreamy one. He is from Jhang but has fully adapted to Lahore’s rhythms while maintaining deep roots. His mother still sends him homemade achaar with every visiting relative. He is slim, spectacled, and almost always has a sketchbook within reach. He is regular in his prayers and takes Ramadan seriously. He does not drink, smoke, or attend mixed gatherings he considers inappropriate, but he does not impose these standards on others and is socially at ease in most settings.

Waqar Ahmed 36 Years, Bhatti Profile

Waqar has spent the last eleven years working in international development and humanitarian relief — first with UN-HABITAT on housing reconstruction after the 2010 floods, then with UNHCR on Afghan refugee documentation in KPK, and currently as a senior programme manager with a UK-based INGO running education access projects in southern Punjab and Sindh. He has worked in nine of Pakistan’s provinces and has a ground-level understanding of this country that most people in his income bracket simply do not have. He is one of the most well-travelled Pakistanis without ever having needed to leave the country though he has worked in Jordan and Kenya briefly. He is fluent in Urdu, Punjabi, Saraiki and working Sindhi. Despite years of exposure to the worst of human circumstance, he is not cynical, he calls it ‘maintained optimism through action.’ He lives simply, owns very little, and gives generously. He prays regularly, reads widely, and makes decisions slowly but with complete conviction.