Wedding plans ~ yes, there are some....
I don't know what I was thinking when I originally thought that it wouldn't be that difficult to plan a wedding from the ship. We would get the location for the wedding, get the hall and the rest could wait until we got there. Well, as planning goes, that was a sucky plan. Since arriving on the ship, I have been pestering Akis to contact the church, contact the City Hall, make a list of guests, think of a location for the reception. This need to get lists, arrange conversations, generally organize ourselves has proven to be the Achilles heel for 2 non-planners. So 4 weeks after getting on the ship, Akis and I were no further along in our plans, and yet I had received emails from family and friends that they were investigating holidays, looking at hotel availability... You know, generally being organized.
The crux of our challenges seemed to be that nobody wanted to book the hall/church for us. As one would assume, there is more paperwork that needed to be done given that I am not Greek Orthodox, nor am I Greek. Well it would seem that until I was able to provide translated documents like proof of baptism, birth certificates, etc., booking a location was not a possibility. However no matter who we spoke to ~ church, city hall ~ they always said, don't worry, there will be lots of space, don't worry about a date. I think they were crazy.
So, in the interest of keeping things moving along, and not waking up one Monday in August and realizing we should be asking people 'Hey, what are you doing this weekend? Wanna come to a wedding??', we went ahead and hired a Wedding Planner. This may be the best money I will ever spend. Not only have we been able to get a date more or less confirmed, I don't have to hound Akis to go and make phone calls! And because they have been doing wedding planning for about 10 years, they don't need my papers until I get there. It is a win/win. Right now, there are strikes going on in Athens which means that the government workers are not working. While this is proving to be a bit more challenging for the planner to solidify the 'where' option for the ceremony, that is OK, because we at least have more or less a 'when'.... at least enough for people to start planning their trips.
And the date will be....August 22nd or August 23rd. So keep it open!
The crux of our challenges seemed to be that nobody wanted to book the hall/church for us. As one would assume, there is more paperwork that needed to be done given that I am not Greek Orthodox, nor am I Greek. Well it would seem that until I was able to provide translated documents like proof of baptism, birth certificates, etc., booking a location was not a possibility. However no matter who we spoke to ~ church, city hall ~ they always said, don't worry, there will be lots of space, don't worry about a date. I think they were crazy.
So, in the interest of keeping things moving along, and not waking up one Monday in August and realizing we should be asking people 'Hey, what are you doing this weekend? Wanna come to a wedding??', we went ahead and hired a Wedding Planner. This may be the best money I will ever spend. Not only have we been able to get a date more or less confirmed, I don't have to hound Akis to go and make phone calls! And because they have been doing wedding planning for about 10 years, they don't need my papers until I get there. It is a win/win. Right now, there are strikes going on in Athens which means that the government workers are not working. While this is proving to be a bit more challenging for the planner to solidify the 'where' option for the ceremony, that is OK, because we at least have more or less a 'when'.... at least enough for people to start planning their trips.
And the date will be....August 22nd or August 23rd. So keep it open!
posted by Carrie @ 4:42 PM
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