Bring Me Sunshine! A Rustic Wedding in Greece

We need warm sun­shine and smiles to brighten up what promises to be another chilly and damp week! So how does 30 degrees in the sun­shine sound?… and a long table cov­ered in can­dles… a vin­tage white VW Bee­tle con­vert­ible with the roof down…

Sounds per­fect to me, and when you see the lovely images by wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Ben­jamin Toms I know you’ll agree! Today’s gor­geous bride is Chris­tine, and she and Alex have both shared their mem­o­ries of the wed­ding day with you. Con­grat­u­la­tions to you both — you make a stun­ning cou­ple! Thank you so much for shar­ing your beau­ti­ful day with us. Claire xxx

A rus­tic wed­ding in Greece! Chris­tine and Alex

Wed­ding venue:

Villa Cecilia in Pelekas, Corfu — www.kastamonitis.com

Wed­ding photographer:

Ben­jamin Toms Pho­tog­ra­phy — www.benjamintomsphotography.co.uk

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

Rus­tic chic

A lit­tle about the wed­ding ceremony:

A Greek Ortho­dox ser­vice in Theotokos Odig­i­tria Greek Ortho­dox Church in Pelekas Vil­lage in Corfu, Greece. It’s a beau­ti­ful small church in the cen­tre of the vil­lage with lots of Ortho­dox icons on the walls.

The ser­vice is rather unique because the bride and groom do not make vows to each other; instead is abun­dant with sym­bols and actions that reflect mar­riage: love, mutual respect, equal­ity and sac­ri­fice. There is no sep­a­ra­tion of the guests into guests of the bride and guests of the groom: every­one sits / stands together.

The ser­vice was held in ancient Greek, with lots of chant­ing by the priest, so we cre­ated a wed­ding book­let describ­ing the dif­fer­ent parts of the ser­vice, so every­one could fol­low what was going on up front.

Tell us a lit­tle about your wed­ding venue styling and details:

Alex is half Greek and we have been hol­i­day­ing there together since 2003. His fam­ily bought a hol­i­day house on Corfu in 2005 and we both have fallen in love with the island, the locals, the food and espe­cially the scenic west coast over the last 7 years.

Being South African, I love the hot weather and we wanted to cel­e­brate our wed­ding here, so all our friends and fam­ily could expe­ri­ence Corfu as we do (and we didn’t have to worry about a rainy day).

The wed­ding recep­tion was held at Villa Cecilia in Pelekas Vil­lage, Corfu. The villa itself has a stun­ning old man­sion feel with lots of nat­ural ele­ments, rus­tic stone and neu­tral color schemes.

Judith Hoeve­naar, an inte­rior designer and the villa owner, dec­o­rated and styled the wed­ding recep­tion for us. We wanted to keep in with a nat­ural Greek theme and used lots of green­ery from the island to dec­o­rate the venue.

We used fresh olive branches, grapes and pep­per­corn vines from the gar­den and I kept my flow­ers sim­ple using white roses – Avalanche, Akito and White Spray.

To give every­thing a roman­tic feel we had lots and lots of can­dle light on the table and around the gar­den, with lanterns, hur­ri­cane lamps, tealights, etc.

We placed dif­fer­ent shaped glass wine decanters on the table, hold­ing dif­fer­ent styles of red, includ­ing New Zealand Pinot Noirs, South African Shi­raz, Span­ish Rioja’s and Toro’s and Greek Red blends. A close friend cre­ated the lug­gage tags for the decanters.

We bought glass vase name place hold­ers from White Com­pany and got a pro­fes­sional cal­lig­ra­pher to write our guest names in Eng­lish on 1 side and Greek script on the other, on heavy hand­made cot­ton paper placecards.

We used ornate white framed black­boards for our menu and wine list and rested them on artist easels.

With the weather being so amaz­ing, we could hold our entire wed­ding recep­tion out­side. Our cham­pagne recep­tion was around the pool with views of the sea, and then moved to the long cov­ered ter­race next to the gar­den for dinner.

I wanted our friends and fam­ily to expe­ri­ence a tra­di­tional Greek ban­quet style meal, so we sat all our guests at 1 long table and served a selec­tion of Greek mezze and local Cor­foit Greek dishes made by Thomas and Vasso Siri­o­tis who own O’Foros Tav­erna in Old Perithia. The meal was amaz­ing and lasted 3 hours before the speeches actu­ally started.

Invi­ta­tions and recep­tion stationery:

Our wed­ding invites were by Art­ca­dia Sta­tionery Co. — www.artcadia.co.uk, our wed­ding map by Cute Maps — www.cutemaps.co.uk, and we bought the place cards from Cox & Cox — http://www.coxandcox.co.uk/hand-made-placecards and got The Cal­lig­ra­phy Stu­dio — www.calligraphystudio.co.uk to pro­fes­sion­ally write our guest names in Eng­lish on 1 side of the card and Greek on the other. All the remain­ing recep­tion sta­tionery was made by myself along with the help from my friends.

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

Our DJ was Alekos Mouza­ki­tis — http://corfudj.com/

What did you wear?

Know­ing that it was going to be a 30 degree day we opted for cooler out­fits with a relaxed style to suit the weather and location.

Bride -
Dress: Augusta Jones Wed­ding Dress (Carli Style) from Lara B Bridal in New­mar­ket
Shoes: Jimmy Choo India Cham­pagne San­dals
Ear­rings: “Some­thing Bor­rowed” from my brides­maid
Brides­maids: Dresses from Coast Stores UK

Groom -
Suit: Moss Bros Bespoke Black Linen Suit
Shirt: White shirt from Charles Tyr­whitt
Tie: Black Silk tie from Thomas Pink
Shoes: Prada
Cuf­flinks: Wed­ding gift from Chris­tine from Nikos Jew­ellery & Sculp­ture in Corfu — http://www.nikosjewellery.com/

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

Chris­tine

• Stand­ing hand in hand at the altar and real­is­ing our day had finally arrived
• The wed­ding speeches – very amus­ing and had every­one in fits of laughter
• Brides­maid blow­ing out the “can­dle of life” with her wed­ding fan in the mid­dle of the reli­gious cer­e­mony… and a very pan­icked best man fran­ti­cally try­ing to find a lighter to re-light it.
• Hav­ing the best night on the dance­floor and look­ing around real­is­ing that our clos­est fam­ily and friends had trav­elled from across the globe (South Africa, Aus­tralia, UK, Ire­land & Greece) to share our day with us – it had been a very long time since we were all in the same coun­try / place at the same time.

Alex:

• End­ing up in the pool at the end of the night suited and booted
• Chris­tine turn­ing up late at the church
• The choir dur­ing the cer­e­mony – Amazing!!
• Best man for­get­ting the rings and run­ning back to car to get them whilst Chris­tine was get­ting out of the wed­ding car and about to walk down the aisle

Wed­ding day advice:

Enjoy every moment, the day passes by so quickly.

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

Wed­ding Video – Shoot it Your­self — www.shoot-it-yourself.co.uk