A Romantic Wedding

I’m happy to report that Judy and Dimitris finally tied the knot on Valentine’s Day! Hurrah! I’m so pleased for them. The whole day was perfect and very romantic. They got married in a lovely church in the heart of Thessaloniki (Salonika) in northern Greece. The church was very beautiful, with ornate wooden carvings and gold leaf decorations throughout and wonderful frescos on the walls. And Thessaloniki was simply breath-taking – a jewel of a city on the Mediterranean coast.

I’ve never seen Judy look so happy – I don’t think she stopped grinning all day. She looked absolutely stunning in her stylish ivory wedding dress with a lovely bow on the front, her beautiful bouquet tied with an orange ribbon. And Dimitris looked extremely handsome in his new tailored dark blue suit, ivory tie and orange handkerchief protruding neatly from his breast pocket, standing proudly by her side. As I said in a previous blog, Judy wanted orange included in the wedding colour scheme as it was her lucky colour.

In the end there were two ushers, five bridesmaids and six pageboys. The ushers were Dave and Ed (my brothers). They wore very smart three piece suits - one dark blue and one dark grey - and sported orange socks. I haven’t seen them look so smart since their own weddings!

The bridesmaids were: myself, Dina (the happy couple’s daughter), Crissy and Sarah (my daughters) and Eleni (Dimitris’ niece). The girls wore a beautiful special occasions ivory dress with ivory bow that complemented the bride’s dress perfectly. They also wore knee high ivory socks with bows, girls ivory patent shoes with bow and scallop decoration and orange ribbons in their hair.

The pageboys were: Keith and Simon (my sons), Bobbi and Ashley (my nephews) and Elias and Nik (Dimitris’ nephews). They wore three piece boys ivory suit sets, boys white shirts, boys bow ties, cotton boys high quality Spanish socks in ivory and boys black patent brogue shoes.

After the wedding we all returned to Giannitsa (Dimitris’ home town, located north of Thessaloniki) and attended an enormous reception. There were hundreds of guests, lots of singing and dancing and more food than I’ve ever seen in one place before. Dimitris’ brother (and best man) Kostas is a chef and he laid on the food and what a fabulous job he did – it was some of the best food I’ve ever tasted.

In total, we spent a week in Greece: three days in Giannitsa getting to know Dimitris’ family, a couple of days in Thessaloniki enjoying the beauty and history of the city and a couple of days in Halkidiki - a three pronged peninsula south of Thessaloniki where Dimitris’ family have a small hotel close to a beach. It was a great wedding, a great holiday and the thing I liked most about it was getting to know lots of lovely Greek people. They were some of the nicest, most welcoming people I’ve ever met. I will definitely visit Greece again.