Diary of a Greek Bride: The Wedding Part 3

After the photographs, we made our way back to the reception venue where it was time for our grand entrance. Only 2 people knew the song we were coming in to - Johnny our good friend and MC for the day and my sister Nina who was to give Johnny the thumbs up for when we arrived! So we came in to 'Feeling Good' - now I love the Nina Simone version but we decided to use the Muse version and I'm so glad we did. It was a big statement song with a great rock sound to it and worked perfectly! Mr and Mrs Harley were indeed feeling good!

We had informal platters of food served at each table - barbecued fish, meat and chicken with Greek salad, roast oregano potatoes and a whole lot more. There was so much food we ended up serving the left overs the following day for lunch! 

The time whizzed by and we made sure we took a moment to take in everything. One of my most memorable moments of the day was sitting on our table next to Glenn and looking at everyone enjoying the food against the stunning backdrop and just thinking " Wow, this is just how I imaged it to be!" Magda and Markos had done a brilliant job of decorating the place with twinkly little lights, lanterns and beautiful white roses everywhere… it was the romantic, soft elegance we were hoping to achieve. Our photographer got some brilliant shots of the reflections of the lights in the pool - very artistic!

We finally got around to doing the speeches - my best friend Win began was first up and she generally gushed about the two of us, having known both of us before we got together and so many lovely things about each of us. It was an honour to have her make the first speech. More traditionally we had father of the bride, father of the groom, best man then it was my turn. I had decided to make a speech - after all, when do we ever get to hear from the bride? I had put a lot of thought into what I wanted to say and tried to say something personal about each of my bridesmaids/brides man and what their friendship meant to me. I then went on to thank each set of parents before declaring my undying love for my beloved new husband! I was a bag of nerves to begin with and after fluffing my first few sentences I found my pace and managed to get to the end without breaking down or dropping the mic.

Just as Glenn was about to start his speech we got a bit of a surprise… fireworks! It was rather an untimely surprise as Glenn had began said a few words before they started going off and quite literally stole the show! We later found out that my mum had arranged for this to happen at the end of the speeches, however, because we were behind time so to speak, the man setting them off was going to miss the last ferry back to Paros, so he needed to get them lit so he could scarper! What a hard act to follow! Glenn's speech was lovely though - it short and sweet and really heartfelt.

Now we hadn't planned to have a first dance as such. What was supposed to happen after the speeches, as discussed and agreed with our wedding planner was this: we were going to ask everyone to gather round as we cut the cake, then we'd walk over to the dance floor as though we were going to have a first dance but in actual fact we were going to get everyone to join in and dance to Zorbas dance! Sadly this did not happen. The speeches finished, there was no cake in sight and the DJ had disappeared. Of course nobody else noticed this except us… so we carried on mingling with guests while giving each other puzzled looks as to why there was no cake, no Greek dancing, no wedding planner and no music. After about 5 mins the DJ emerged from wherever he'd been (Scoffing food? Sleeping? Toilet?) and decided to put on The Proclaimers "500 miles" - a song from the 80s by a Scottish band. We weren't impressed! Anyway, regardless of this we headed over to the dance floor and started to boogie to the Ting Tings 'Shut Up and Let Me Go' and after a few minutes everyone had made a huge ring around us thinking this was our "first dance"!! Well… we couldn't have chosen a more inappropriate song title to dance our first dance to as a newly married couple! At least we can laugh about it now….

To be fair to him, the DJ was brilliant, he played most of our playlist and threw a few of his own tracks in there and everyone seemed to have a good old boogie. There was impromptu drunken swimming in the pool (in pants!) and my only complaint was he didn't have Beyonce's "All the single ladies" for me to throw my bouquet to…. But then I hadn't told him I was going to do this. So I'll let him off!

Out of nowhere, Magda came and grabbed us from the dance floor and insisted we cut the cake - oh really….? Like she'd just remembered! It was a pretty lame cake-cutting to be honest. Most people were either drunk or on the dance floor by now (or both) and didn't realise we were cutting the cake… so we had about 6 people watch us 'cut the cake'. By this time our photographer had left as she had to go at midnight and it was probably 1am by now now…so although disappointing, at least we still managed to do it. Most people had filled up on delicious desert by then and couldn't stomach wedding cake anyway… it remained untouched the whole night which was kind of sad.

Despite the few hiccups I've spoken about, it really was a great night and nobody else noticed these things or if they did, they were kind enough not to say anything. I'm only writing about it to really drive home the fact that things will not go to plan on your wedding day! No matter how much planning and preparation you do, sometimes it's just not enough but things will have a way of working out. You rely on other people so much on your wedding it's no wonder the term Bridezilla gets banded about so much - you are literally putting your whole wedding in other people's hands and sometimes, it's understandable and perfectly normal to get upset when something goes wrong. Perhaps we should have been a bit more Bridezilla and less laid back, but it's just not our style!

All images by Magdalene Kourti

That said, we really did have the most truly amazing, unique, memorable wedding day. It wasn't just the best day of our lives, it was the best WEEK of our lives!

CC

Greek Photographers: Magdalene Kourti

Magdalene Kourti has studied fine art in WSA and has a Master degree in digital image by the Metropolitan University of London . Being a painter and a video artist has influenced is immediately evident in her photography work, which captures emotion and movement beautifully!  Her typical clientele consists of couples that look for something different on their wedding day. I would definitely say that she is the photographer to go to when you want a clear journalistic approach to the photographic coverage of your wedding day, rather than perfect, magazine type images! To me emotion makes for the most incredible pictures!

Magdalene is happy to travel for weddings in or out of Greece and offers a team with her co-partner Kostas Agiannitis for creative photography & videography.

Find her on www.mkourti.com

Diary of a Greek Bride: The Wedding Part 2

The morning of the wedding was totally chilled: I had a swim, sunbathed and enjoyed lunch around the pool with a few friends and bridesmaids. I lost count of how many people told me "you're the most chilled out bride I've ever seen!" but I guess it's hard not to be when you're on an island as beautiful as Antiparos!

All images are by Magdalene Kourti

Meanwhile, Glenn and his brother and best man Paul were re-writing our translated ceremony. We had asked Paul to translate what the Mayor would say into English and to act as our "celebrant" . However when we read the translation it wasn't quite what we had in mind for our wedding ceremony... with statements like "I accept the burden and conflicts of marriage" included in there we felt it sounded more like a an agreement to go into battle than a declaration of love for one another! There wasn't any room for our own carefully considered vows we had written, our ring exchange or the 3 readings we'd spent months choosing. The guys did a great job in re-wording the translation to sound more romantic and to include readings, vows and the ring exchange. This said, it really wasn't something we should have been stressing about the morning of our wedding... again, a situation that could have been resolved if our planner had provided us with the translation days earlier as we had requested.

By 1pm I was showered and ready for the stylist to work her magic. I had had a trial with her a couple of days before so she had a good idea of what I wanted - hair up, not too structured and make-up soft and romantic. She did a fantastic job despite my initial reservations at the trial where her love of hairspray and corkscrew curls made me nervous! We decided to pin into my hair tiny little buds of white Greek roses to match mine and the bridesmaid's bouquets. I'd also bought a beautiful vintage style hair comb which finished the look perfectly.

We had asked all of our guests to convene at our apartments at 5.30 which is is where we were having the reception dinner. My friends gave out hand held paddle fans I had made to keep everyone cool while they waited and to line the long palm-fringed path down to the gates. At 5.45 I emerged with my 2 bridesmaids, one bridesman and my Dad we were led down the path by three musicians playing traditional Greek music. I can't tell you how emotional I felt at this point and as soon as I saw Glenn's smiling face I burst into tears! He looked so handsome standing there waiting for me and all the stresses of the days leading up to this point didn't matter. We kissed, wiped my tears away and linked arms to lead everyone through the village to walk to the spot where we would be married. The procession was so memorable with all the locals coming out to applaud us and wish us well and more in keeping with the Greek way of the Bride and Groom arriving at the ceremony together. I'll never forget it and so many of our guests have said how unique and fun it was to accompany the bride and groom in this way.

Once we reached the ruins of the old Kastro, we waited outside while all our guests took their places inside. The musicians led us into the Kastro and once we'd figured out where we were meant to stand (a tad embarrassing!) we were greeted by Eleni the deputy mayor of Antiparos who would marry us. We were both really nervous throughout the whole ceremony but we said our self-written vows and had the ring exchanges without any glitches so all went well. Our three readings were delivered beautifully - an extract from Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Kahlil Gibran's 'Love One Another' and the quirky "Lovely Love Story" by Edward Monkton which got a few laughs, not to mention a few puzzled looks!

Afterwards we had rice thrown at us and champagne was served in the ceremony location for half an hour. It was just enough time to be congratulated and to have a few snaps with guests before we slipped off to have our professional photos taken. Being able to slip away to the beach with Glenn for an hour was perfect. Our photographer Magdalene remained unobtrusive and captued images of us both trying to take it all in. Magdalene did such an amazing job with the photos. Looking at them now I can't believe how she managed to capture the whole intimacy and beauty of the day. She is one very talented photographer whose thoughtful and considered ways gave us photos that quite literally look like we were on a film set!

CC

Diary of a Greek Bride: The Wedding Part 1

The week leading up to our wedding on Antiparos was meant to be one of long lazy lunches with friends and family, swimming in the sea, working on my tan and generally chilling out before the Big Day. However in reality things turned out quite different! 

Before I go on to spill the beans I have to say that the week we got married really was the best of our lives. It wasn't just our wedding day alone but the days before and the days afterwards with all our closest friends and family really were incredible and will stay with us etched in our memories for ever. And many of our guests have said the same!

STRIKE HELL!

So, 3 days before the wedding the Greeks decide to hold a national strike which meant all transport throughout Greece and on the islands was suspended... so no planes, no ferries, no trains. Cue lots of frantic emails and texts sent back and forth between us and our guests some of who were now stranded in Athens and others who were on other islands holidaying before they got to us. What had we done?! Would we have any guests turn up? Arrrggghh!

PAPERWORK HELL!

I must mention the paperwork hell we went through. When we arrived on the island, our wedding planner, Magda, informed us that the local Mayor's office were not happy with our papers and that we had failed to get them stamped and authorised in Athens. We had NO IDEA that we were meant to do this despite calling the Greek embassy and visiting the consulate here in London and repeatedly checkign our paperwork was correct.Well it wasn't and at no point did anyone tell us this and our planner certainly wasn't aware of it. To say we felt utterly foolish is an under statement. Luckily Magda had some friends who were going back to Athens that night, the day before the pending strike, and they were going to give the papers to Magda's daughter who lived in Athens to take to the Australian and English Embassies on our behalf. Phew! the daughter returned to Antiparos on the Thursday with the papers all in order on the Thursday - she couldn't get the the island due to the strike on Wednesday! We got the OK to proceed with the marriage first thing Friday morning, ie, ONE DAY BEFORE we were due to have our civil wedding that 60 of our guests had flown from the UK and Australia to witness! Talk about living on the edge.

One thing I would say if you are not a Greek national and you want to get married in Greece, then check, double check and tripple check you have all your paperwork in order, not just with the Greek Embassy in London but with your country's embassy in Athens. God knows how this managed to slip beneath our radar but it did and we were very nearly having a sham wedding whereby we would have gone through with what looked like a legal ceremony but actually it wouldn't have been. Doesn't bare thinking about!

WEDDING PLANNER WARNING!

Anyway, what should have been carefree days of looking forward to our wedding turned into a stressful anxiety-ridden time spent constantly on the phone to the embassies trying to sort the mess out. While our planner was doing her best to help us resolve this issue, we felt she should have been more clued up on our paperwork which we had submitted to her the week before we left the UK. From her point of view, we were responsible for ensuring our consulates in Athens accepted the papaerwork we arrived in Greece with...There was no use in pinning blame on anyone, it was an oversight,  we dealt with it and luckily it all turned out ok in the end!

THE DAY BEFORE THE WEDDING

We had planned a boat trip around the island on the Thursday but because of the strikes lots of our guests were unable to make it in time so we made the decision to postpone the boat trip to Friday... and we were so glad we did as we had such a brilliant time and it meant loads more people were able to come on it, 43 of us in total! Captain Ben plied us all with ouzo and provided a tasty barbecued lunch on a deserted beach which was the perefct ice breaker for people to mingle and get to know one another. Success! I would definitely recommend organising some fun activity like this for everyone so they can get to see th elocal area and it gets everyone socialsiing right from the word go.

In the evening we had organised some sunset drinks at a gorgeous bar on the island. We told everyone to drop by for casual drinks between 7-9pm which again was a great way of spending time with our guests and gave us a chance to say more than just a quick "hello and thanks for coming to our wedding"  on the actual day itself. I can't tell you how beautiful it was to be stressfree at this point and sipping chilled wine with all our favourite people around us watching the most gloriouis of sunsets!

Congratulations Charlotte!

I just wanted to say congratulations to Charlotte who got married today in Antiparos!  We cannot wait for a catch up post and to see all the wonderful wedding shots!

NY & SP

Diary of a Greek Bride - Kitting out the Groomsmen

In theory, you would think getting the groom and groomsmen suited and booted but be easy… wrong!  We took a first tentative trip to Saville Row in London to get a few ideas. If we were millionaires then this would be the place to go. Sadly, we are both mere public servants planning our wedding on a budget so as nice as it was to go window shopping, we thought we better hit the high street.


When it comes to style we are both quite similar in that we love vintage. It is going to be hot in Greece but we couldn’t quite envisage saying our vows with Glenn dressed for the beach in flip flops and shorts. Preferring to be formally dressed for the occasion, Glenn was on the look out for a 3-piece vintage style suit, light in colour and made of light weight fabric. We scoured the high street and decided cream linen was not for him. Most wedding suits were either dark or light grey and we felt this was not the colour for our Greek Island wedding either.


Then a friend of ours who had got married 2 years ago suggested we pay a visit to these guys at Dress 2 Kill http://www.dress2kill.com/. Bespoke suits at very reasonable prices was just what we were looking for so booked our appointment. They were brilliant. We chose the fabric and matching lining for the jacket and waistcoat and a few weeks later, Glenn had his first fitting. Perfect! So perfect in fact that his best man and Father of the Bride decided to go for the same suit as well.

Image from moss.co.uk

So all we needed to do was sort out 3 groomsmen and a bridesman. The boys hit the high street and found that Moss had the most variety and decided to go for a smart beige  2-piece.  http://www.moss.co.uk/catalogue/963868905.html Luckily, all the boys loved it and the price wasn't too bad either.
So that's the boys sorted, my 2 bridesmaids and bridesman, Mother of the Bride and groom, Father of the bride and of course the bride and groom themselves!


CC

Diary of a Greek Bride - Charlottes's Invitations

We have had so many compliments about our invitations and we're so glad we went with Tammy at Uniquity Invitations. We decided against including RSVP cards and information sheets as we already had the website with all the info and guests can RSVP through this. We just wanted to keep it simple and elegant, so printed onto cream coloured textured card. No fold up extras, no ribbons, no diamante stick on embellishments, just a flat printed invitation!

The good thing about the template set is we can tailor it to the other wedding stationery such as menus, place cards and gift tags for favours. I've also decided to make hand held paddle fans for our guests to use during the outdoor ceremony that we're having. Whatever your budget I think you need to put quite a bit of thought into your invitations as it's the first representation of your wedding that your guests will see.

CC

Diary of a Greek Bride - Choosing your Invites

Your invitations are the first real hint to guests as to what kind of wedding you're planning to have. With this is mind, we wanted ours to reflect the fact that we are having an informal destination wedding so we started thinking about the design and how it will fit into our budget quite early on. 

Images from sarahanks.com

Image from weddingpaperdivas.com

There are literally hundreds of options to chose from -  you might want beautiful hand crafted invitations such as thesehttp://www.slatersparke.com  or elegant modern designs like these http://www.weddingpaperdivas.com/shop/wedding_invitations.htm#all=1&papers=2,5&. Or perhaps with a destination wedding in mind you might go for this designer  http://sarahanks.com/wed_chenghalliday.html . If you're feeling crafty, there's also the DIY option. Whatever your budget, there are so many wonderful creative ideas out there, you really are spoilt for choice!

Image from uniquityinvitations.com

Image from uniquityinvitations.com

We decided to go for a half-way-house option of getting our invitations professionally designed but getting them printed ourselves. We found Tammy from Uniquity Invitations http://www.uniquityinvitations.com/ to do this for us. You can choose a design and for $75 she will email you a digital file template set including editable save the date, invitation, RSVP cards, table numbers, place names etc… what a brilliant idea and great value!

For a little bit extra ($99) Tammy will create a custom template with your own unique design which is the option we went for. After briefing Tammy on what we wanted, a few days later she emailed over a design concept which we revised and developed together. We decided to ask a local printers to do the printing as we wanted a professional look and our printer just wasn't up to the job.  I am pleased to say how glad we are we made this decision because not only do we have unique and professional looking invitations to send but a beautiful memento of our wedding too!

CC

Diary of a Greek Bride - My Moodboard to Date

So far, our planner has been great in coming up with suggestions and working with us to develop our vision of what we would like the wedding to be. Ok, she might have taken 3 weeks to reply to my latest email but I guess I just have to accept how laid back Greeks are in comparison to a couple of London city dwellers like us who are used to being in the fast lane in life!  Plus, most places are closed in the Winter months in the islands so it’s not always easy for her to get quotes immediately. Patience is most definitely a virtue here!

While we haven't got a colour scheme as such we have decided to have the olive tree as our wedding "emblem" to represent peace and love and thought it would tie in nicely with our wedding on the island with it being native to Greece. We're hoping to have olive coloured ties for the boys and my bouquet of Greek white roses will have olive leaf foliage in it. We’ll sail all our guests around the island the day before the wedding which we hope will be loads of fun and encourage pre-wedding mingling.  Our civil ceremony will take place outdoors in the ruins of an ancient castle next to the cutest most quintessentially Greek chapel you have ever seen (neither of us are Greek Orthodox so can’t marry in a Greek church). For favours, our guests will each receive a mini bottle of local olive oil made on the island to take away as a memento of our wedding. We’ll have a processional walk back to the reception venue accompanied by traditional bazouki/violin players and it’s these touches which people have oooh’d and aaaahhh’d at that keep us sane in the knowledge we have made the right decision to marry abroad.

Images from (clockwise from top left)
sugarpluminvitations.blogspot.com, stylemepretty.com,
rockmywedding.co.uk, Soros Beach Taverna, & myrecipes.com

My 2 lovely bridesmaids will wear these beautiful dresses from Two Birds http://www.twobirdsbridesmaid.co.uk/ - they're perfect for a Greek island wedding being light weight, versatile and allows each bridesmaid to choose a style suited to their shape.

I've attached my mood board (the dress isn't on there as I will not be giving that away until after the wedding!) to give you an idea of the style of our wedding which will have vintage elements with a rustic feel. I hope you feel inspired by it all!

Next on our list is the invitations .....more to follow!

CC

Diary of a Greek Bride - The Wedding Planner

We spent a few days exploring and found a wedding planner on the island who will take care of all the arrangements and even visited a few potential venues for the reception. We found out we needed special permission from the mayor’s office so it is worth checking your dates and all the legalities BEFORE you set a date. Documents need to be translated so make sure you have all the necessary information before you make up your mind about having the wedding abroad.

Image by CC

For some people, hiring a wedding planner would be the ultimate indulgence, the ultimate fairytale stress-free wedding of your dreams. However, what I will say is that if  you are a person who likes to be in control and thrives on organising every last detail then you might find planning a wedding abroad slightly frustrating. Sending emails with pictures of your requirements is one thing but what if something gets lost in translation?  Handing over the organising to someone else may seem like a dream but actually in reality it is totally nerve wracking. You are essentially putting the most important day of your lives in someone else’s hands and you have to hope that your Jo-Lo esque wedding planner delivers the goods!! Now I’m at this stage of praying and hoping because the Save the Dates have gone out, flights from Australia have been booked and we’ve paid 50% deposit for our amazing photo-journalist photographer! Having said that, I have no doubt that Magda, our  wedding planner, will be nothing less than fabulous but you have to keep the communication flowing at all times.

Image from CC

For us there will be no wine tasting or menu sampling or choosing beautiful bouquets until we arrive on the island the week before as we won’t have the time to go out again before the wedding, so you have to be totally happy and confident with this prospect. For others this would be their dream wedding with no hassle and someone else taking care of all the decisions. Most of the time this is the case for us as we originally set out to have a stress free, low key simple wedding. However we have had our moments of thinking “what if the wine is awful and tastes like jet fuel?” and “what if the mayor doesn’t turn up?” but you have to chill out and relinquish the control and trust that it is all in good hands.

CC

Diary of a Greek Bride - Charlottes's First Diary Entry

Introducing Charlotte our Greek bride who will be blogging her planning diary with us!

Charlotte's First Diary Entry

Hello! I am thrilled to be sharing the details of my wedding in Greece with you and I hope I can offer some insight into planning a wedding abroad for brides who dream of sunshine and sand for their wedding day!

Following the excitement of our engagement we knew we had to get down to business and start planning the wheres and whens of our nuptials for 2 reasons:

1.     I am English, my finance is Australian and we live in London. So some fancy logistical footwork was needed in order to have the wedding we want and to keep both families happy on both sides of the globe.

2.     We both agreed we wanted to be married within a year of being engaged after hearing one too many tales of 3 year long engagements and constant stress leading up to it.

So for us, we needed to get a move on.

We knew immediately that we wanted to get married in the sunshine so that pretty much ruled out a wedding in the UK!  My husband-to-be is from Perth, Australia and we felt it was too far for all our family and friends to fly out there from the UK, not to mention expensive, so by choosing the Greek Islands everyone’s a winner - we get our sun kissed wedding as well as a week-long party with 60 of our closest friends and family! We just needed to decide on a destination...

Image from bonovox @ www.trekearth.com

We had both been to quite a few of the Greek islands so wanted to choose an island that was new to us and also off the tourist trail. We hadn’t even heard of Antiparos until a colleague of mine who’d been going for 20 years mentioned it and it sounded exactly what we were looking for – relaxed, pretty and with plenty of beautiful beaches.

So we boarded our EasyJet flight to Athens in the height of summer, me with a stinking cold and 2 hours later than scheduled (has anyone ever boarded an EasyJet flight on time?) and with 9 hours to kill in Athens before we boarded the over-night ferry to Paros (not through choice, we missed our ferry due to being delayed and this was the next available ferry - not advised!).We awoke to a stunning sunrise in Paros and from here it was a short boat ride over to Antiparos, a mere 28 hours after leaving London!!! 


Now while I’ll be the first to champion any couple’s decision to tie the knot abroad, there are pros and cons to this which we have been finding out! It’s hard enough making a decision about the destination, let alone trying to make your mind up about caterers, flowers and all other finer details that are essential for making your big day perfect. But once we arrived on Antiparos we knew we had made the right choice. It was picture postcard perfect. Our minds were made up! However, you have to prepare yourselves for the fact that some of your guests may not be able to be there to share your special day for various reasons, be it financial reasons or maybe Greece just isn’t their cup of tea.  Either way, whoever you invite should feel honoured to be part of your day and in return you should feel honoured when your guests RSVP back and say “Hell yeah, crack open the ouzo, we’re in!”



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