14 February 2007

My first Greek Wedding



Arthur and I were invited to a Traditional Greek wedding by the square butchers mother, her daughter married a man from Thessaloniki where she went to college. This photo was taken with Arthurs cousin Kostas and his wife Maria (who is expecting in a month), at the reception. Unfortunately the other photos didn't turn out so well, the hall was kind of dark.
The wedding started with the groom waiting outside of the church (along with the guest) for the bride to show up. When the bride shows up he hands her the flowers and they go into the church together. There is only one person as a maid of honor (koobara,κουμπαρα) or a best man (koοbaros,κουμπαρος) and this person will also be the first child's godparent. The priest does all of the speaking, there are no words exchanged between the bride and groom, just the fact that they are there means they want to be married. Everything is done in trinity (three times) the rings are blessed 3 times, the couple drink from the cup 3 times, the crowns are passed between them 3 times and then the couple walks around the alter 3 times while the congregation throws rice at them. All of this is done in Greek, I have asked Arthur if it is possible to have a translator at our wedding and we will look into that as it gets closer to our wedding date.
The reception was about 10 miles out of town at a restaurant in a small town called Mikani. We sat down with Arthurs cousins and had a small plate of appetizers while waiting for the wedding couple. When they arrived I kept telling Arthur they were doing everything backwards compared to our American standards of wedding receptions. The first thing the couple did as they walked in was cut the cake, then they did the couple dance (as we were served dinner), then the family got up to dance with the couple, then the groom did the money dance and then the bride did the money dance. All of the dancing was to Greek music and Greek style dancing, about an hour later the couple and the family finally sat down to eat their dinner. I told Arthur the first thing we are doing when we come in from the church is to sit down and eat our dinner with the rest of the guest, because I know I will be famished. There were about 350 guest at this wedding and only the older people were dancing because of the type of music, so we will also be playing both American and Greek music at our wedding.

1 comment:

zerry ht said...

Have never attended any Greek wedding. But would like to attend if will get any chance. Recently attended one of colleague’s wedding after my business meeting organized at corporate event venues San Francisco. The wedding was really great.