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!
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
