Τρίτη 1 Νοεμβρίου 2011

A Wedding Story

My mother and father got married. They got married on the 7th of September, 1991. They knew each other 1.5 years before they got married. 300 people attended the wedding. I didn’t attend the wedding because I wasn’t born. A priest married my mom and dad. My mom and dad got married at a church, and they chose that location because it was a nice, traditional church, and the environment was very pleasant, with trees, flowers, etc. The church was like all Christian Orthodox churches in Greece; it had drawn Christian pictures on the walls, candles surrounding the inner part of the church, and especially for this event, there were lots of flowers put in the church as well.

The bride wore a white wedding dress, and the groom wore a dark blue suit. Usually in Greece, the colors that are worn in the wedding are white for the bride and dark blue or black for the groom, so those were the special colors. There were other people participating in the wedding. They were the brides and grooms parents, close and other relatives, and friends of the groom and the bride. There were decorations with flowers that were the same color as the bouquet flowers of the bride. In the church, during the ceremony, there was no music, like all traditional Greek weddings. During the ceremony, the Priests sang Byzantine psalms. After the ceremony, there was a reception (where of course there was food!!!), and there was traditional Greek music, which of course was danced traditionally by the guests, the bride and the groom. Greek and international cuisine was served at the wedding. Later on there was a huge wedding cake.

The special traditions that were observed during the wedding were the bride being escorted to the groom by her father, throwing rice and petals of flowers, and the bride throwing the bouquet of flowers at the single female guests. In Greek weddings, it is a tradition for the bride the be at least ten minutes late at the wedding, leaving the groom waiting. The ceremony lasted 1 and a half hours. The reception lasted 2 hours.

This was a very important day to my mom because by this way her family started, which was the basis for the development of our human society. My mom reflecting back on that special day said, “What I liked the most is beautiful environment of the church, the whole ceremony, the flowers, and of course the presence of so many people which in this way showed their love and appreciation to the new couple. Even if I could, I would not change anything in my marriage, because everything was perfect.

My opinion is that from what I’ve heard  I really like the environment of the church where my mom and dad got married, and I don’t think I would have done anything differently if I were getting married. Maybe, I would choose to get married on an Aegean island like Mykonos or Santorini and to have my reception on the beach.

This is what a greek traditional wedding looks like:


This is what I where i want my wedding to be:

Flower bouquet: