THEY came from all over. From the swanky suburbs of Amman, from ancient Jerusalem, Kuwait City and the United States to celebrate the union of their families.

A day later, the wedding guests found themselves gathered together in mourning, around freshly dug graves in the sprawling cemetery where, one after another, 17 of those who had come in celebration were laid to rest.

The bride and groom, Ashraf Da’as, 32, and Nadia al-Alami, 24, had been married less than half an hour when tragedy struck. Married in front of 200 guests, many of who had flown in days before for the society wedding, they went upstairs for their official photographs as the guests milled around in the ballroom, talking excitedly and catching up on family news.

The last picture to be taken was of the couple with their fathers on either side, Nadia’s holding his new son-in-law’s hand and Ashraf’s clutching that of the bride, to symbolise the union of the two families.

Ashraf took out his mobile phone to call downstairs and tell his friends to prepare for their arrival. The traditional Palestinian band, or dabbka, struck up its pipes as the four walked towards the door of the ballroom. And then the bomber struck.

“I thought they were fireworks to greet our arrival. Then I saw the broken glass and the smoke and I heard the screaming,” Nadia told The Times as she arrived at the hospital where her mother is in a coma.

She collapsed in shock and her husband threw himself on top of her to protect her. But the blast had already wreaked its damage and other bodies had saved the newlyweds. On either side of them, their fathers lay prostrate, Nadia’s already dead, cut down by a piece of shrapnel blown into his head, Ashraf’s bleeding but still breathing — just.

“It was as if they had been protecting them,” said Mustafa Akhras, 27. “They both died but Nadia and Ashraf, they didn’t have as much as a graze.” The only thing left intact in the hall was the wedding cake.

Nadia and Ashraf were a golden couple, beloved of their prominent Palestinian families and friends. They met two years ago when Nadia was a student doing work experience in hospital administration. Ashraf was a medical supplies salesman, and they met when he visited the medical centre where she worked. Romance soon blossomed.

“He used to go and meet her when she was getting out of university and they’d go and have coffee together, go to movies,” Osaid Qoashoe, 24, Ashraf’s friend, said. “He said ‘I’ve found her at last, she’s perfect’.”

After a year he called his family in Kuwait and told them:

“I’ve found a girl. She’s going to be a good wife, I’m going to marry her’.”

The Da’as family were delighted, as were the Alamis. “They were so happy,” Nadia said. On March 17, the couple were formally engaged. Nadia spent five months planning the wedding. “We wanted everything to be perfect,” she said. “We had to have everything finished before Ramadan. Then, as soon as Eid was over, we would be married.”

Ashraf’s family, led by his father Khalid Da’as, flew in from Kuwait where they had fled from their ancestral home in Jenin after the 1967 war with Israel. Yesterday he was laid to rest in accordance with Muslim tradition in the Sa’ab graveyard on a barren hillside outside Amman along with 16 other relatives and friends, including Ashraf’s uncle, four cousins and an aunt. “Yesterday was my wedding day and today I have to bury my father,” Ashraf said. “My only joy is that my wife is alive.”

In accordance with tradition, Nadia was not at the funeral. Still clearly in shock, her face gaunt and without make-up, she wept on the shoulders of her older sister Nancy outside the intensive care unit at the Amman Surgical Hospital where her mother was lying with a piece of shrapnel lodged in her neck. Her father’s body still lay in a morgue across town. She had not seen him yet; Ashraf had rushed her home from the hotel immediately after the blast to spare her the horrors of the scene. “We will bury him tomorrow,” Nancy said. “Today all we can do is worry about my mother.”

Wiping her eyes, Nadia left to go back and sit with her new mother-in-law, to grieve and wait for her husband. “They were supposed to be leaving for Sharm-el-Sheik on honeymoon tomorrow,” Nancy said. “But that will not happen now.”

Instead there will be another funeral, for the six of their family members who died. As many as 30 other guests have yet to be identified, too badly burned to be recognised.

“What kind of person would do this to people celebrating a wedding? My sister’s wedding?” Nancy said, anger rising in her voice. “When I saw the policemen I asked them ‘If you know who did this, give me a call and I’ll shoot them myself. Honestly, I would do it myself.”

Times Recommends

• UN may halt 400-year-old 'freedom of the seas'
• Where the Rosetta belongs can’t be set in stone
• Gas deal on hold, but Ukraine may pay in the end