From Australia to Greece and elsewhere, we’ve all had our fair share of attendance to lockdown-postponed weddings in 2022.
But this one did not fall a victim to the pandemic; in fact, it was during lockdown that Maria Tsibidis and Costas Metaxotos made the decision to tie the knot.
“And we just thought to ourselves, what are the chances that we’re still going to be in lockdown two years from now? Because obviously, you need more than just a full year to plan an overseas wedding.” Maria recounts narrating the story to Neos Kosmos.
He proposed during lockdown.
“It’s actually a funny story,” Maria says describing how Costas organised everything during a 14-day isolation period he was in as a close contact.
“The week before, his sister got proposed to as well. And he said to me, come over we want to take some photos with the immediate family, kind of whoever was living in the household at the time.
“So that prompted me to actually get ready for a photo, and not arrive in my activewear which I normally would. He played it really well.”
After 11 years of being together, the “dream wedding” happened as planned. But why Greece?
First came the inspiration.
“In 2019, Costas and I attended two of our cousins’ weddings. My cousin got married in Spetses and his cousin got married in Rhodes. After attending those two, I just felt the difference, it kind of clarified for me that that’s something I really wanted to do,” Maria explains.
There were other factors too. As is the case for many Greek Australians, the couple have immediate family overseas who they don’t get to celebrate Christmas, Easter, birthdays or life milestones with.
“So, I knew that being able to provide such a milestone event in my life for them to witness was also something special for us.”
Sifnos became their island of choice, despite not having family connection to it, for the sake of offering their guests a “new experience”.
“When you go to Greece, you don’t usually say ‘I’m gonna go to Sifnos’. So we were thinking of those who were travelling from Australia, but also our friends and family in Greece that perhaps wouldn’t have visited the island.”
The other points in Maria’s checklist summarise the Greek island rationale for many.
Maria shares the 6 tips she would give a friend wanting to have their wedding in Greece
1. Never too early to start. (Maria got married on Sunday, only because the Saturday church slot was already booked two years before the date when she attempted to make the reservation).
2. Enlisting the help of a wedding planner could save you time and money. Having said that, if you’re keen to do it by yourself, it’s feasible. The power of Instagram can go a long way in helping you plan a wedding.
3. Choose what you want to spend your money on. Weddings can get out of control pretty quickly, but at the same time this is your day. Your money travels further overseas especially in Greece, even though COVID has changed that slightly.
4. Welcome – without forcing – your partner’s involvement in the preparations. Make them part of the experience and you can both have fun in the process, by tapping into each other’s strengths and interests that would relate to a wedding plan.
5. Find a friend to MC – it becomes more personable.
6. Plan, plan, plan and you can have everything arranged to the centimeter. Communicate with your partner and people working on the wedding and things will become effortless. Otherwise, if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail.
“One of the things in my mind when I started to look at locations was the church to be surrounded by water.
“Because when we went to that wedding in Rhodes, I thought it was just magical and the photos taken were just phenomenal.”
“It’s not a Greek party until you see the sunrise”
The second defining factor for the couple was to have a venue that would allow celebrating “into the early hours of the morning.”
It was mission accomplished, with popular Greek artist Yiorgos Tsalikis giving a live show and a DJ keeping spirits high till early morning.
“Our goal was to make it to sunrise,” Maria muses.
“By the end of it we had a full dance floor till 6am. I had to tell the DJ to stop playing the music because I couldn’t move my feet anymore.”
But it wasn’t all about the glenti after. Sticking to some key traditions and customs was important too for the couple.
Even before departing for Sifnos, so that friends who couldn’t make it overseas would be able to take part in the wedding celebrations.
That’s why the couple chose to recreate the ‘krevati’ custom before the wedding day while still in Australia.
“The krevati was pretty crazy, we had a lot of people in the house,” Maria remembers.
“So, you know, all the single ladies in my family and my friends, joined in and made the bed all in white, we threw the rice on the bed, the children, the money. Our aunties and mums were singing ‘Simera gamos ginetai’ although that wasn’t the actual wedding day but it was such a cool vibe.”
A proper food feast followed with lamb on the spit. And the experience, Maria says, was unique to Greeks and non-Greeks alike.
“And for my non-Orthodox friends, it was so cool and different. They wanted to know what the throwing of rice and children symbolises.
“A lot of my cousins had never attended a krevati before and with the single ladies there was bit of a banter about who makes the better bed. Just a great night, really fun.”
Make room for a wedding week
The couple’s day of arrival on the island, 4 July, was their actual anniversary of 11 years together.
It was a Monday and the wedding was scheduled for Sunday, But the few days in between were action-packed.
By Wednesday, their close friends and family started to arrive.
“On Thursday, we combined a hens and a bucks together, we hired three ‘fouskota’ (inflatable boats) for the day and went to Poliegos and Kimolos, two islands around Sifnos. So we spent the whole day sailing around which was just so much fun.”
Welcome drinks followed on Saturday at one of the local bars, an opportunity for everyone to get together and people from either side of the family to meet each other.
Sunday was the big day.
“The ceremony didn’t start until 7pm. And that was purely because it gets really hot in Greece, so you don’t want to be standing at the altar and sweating in the middle of the afternoon.
“But also because our venue went so late into the morning so we had to kind of pace ourselves to make it.”
For the newlyweds, the vibe of the event was encapsulated in a thank you message they sent to all guests a couple of days after the wedding.
“It was more so thanking them that they made the decision to come, because of the life we live in the last couple of years,” Maria explains.’
“And the response was ‘thank you back’, because if it wasn’t for the wedding a lot of people would never have made the decision to come to Greece and have their family holiday […] And I guess, in doing so, you experience new things in life, meet new people and create memories that don’t have a price tag attached to them.
“That’s something that you talk about for the rest of your life. And it was probably the most important thing for Costa and I, that our guests had a really great time, after everything that we’ve experienced together.”
