h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I suppose you are too young - meaning I'm too old.
Does the phrase "hazelnut in every bite" mean nothing to you?
What about "da da da dah"?!

Hey, that does bring me back on topic. What music did/will you have at your wedding(s)?

Um, no and no.

We didn't have any music at the register office, as it was only a short service.

I believe the Greek church has set music for all weddings - a lot of the service is sung, and in the English church we'll have the usual entrance and ending music, and some hymns if the choir isn't away on holiday...

~

There are some differences between greek and english weddings even when it comes to the music like Owl already mentioned. Also the whole wedding service in the Greek church is very different. Some people like it better as it's more extravagant.

What differences? This is interesting. How does a wedding ceremony in a greek church take place?

Methos

A greek wedding is in two parts; the The Betrothal Service and the Marriage Service.

The Betrothal service blesses the rings and sees the rings exchanged and
The Marriage service unites the couple in peace and love.

The marriage service begins with the priest reading 3 kind of prayers;
The first prays to God to grant long life and lots of children. The second asks God to "to preserve them and to remember them and the parents who have nurtured them" and the third is about the priest asking God to unite the couple in harmony.

Then the bride, groom, maid of honour and best man, all holding hand together, go around in a circle 3 times around a table on which are placed the Gospel and the Cross. The husband and wife take their first steps as a married couple. "Stefanos" (crowns) are worn while the married couple go around in a circle and are tied together with white ribbon.

The act of crowning, which is called "STEPSIS" in Greek, is of great significance in The Greek Orthodox Wedding Ceremony.

There are a lot of hymns being sung during the ceremony. The whole service lasts about 45 mins.

Have you already had the betrothal service? Putting it in with the marriage one would seem to be rushing things a bit. In most places there is a minimum wait (eg posting of bans).

With 4 of you going round in a circle holding hands, it sounds like you'd better make sure the right people are tied together with the white ribbon or the wrong ones might end up being married. It must be quite hard for the priest to keep up and do it at all while you are circling. I think perhaps you are tied first.

45 mins seems quite reasonable for a service. English ones can easily drag out that long with delays (before or after with the signing bit). All the photographs seemed to take the longest time at the last one I attended (a couple of weeks ago). The reception meal and speeches were very short in comparison.

Apparently it's not a betrothal in the sense of an engagement - more just preparing you for the major blessing of the actual wedding, which follows about 20 mins later. I think that's about right.

Our English service will take less time than that, as the register-signing bit is not involved (what with the legal bit being already out of the way). The reception _followed_ by the meal (in Cyprus they have both - the reception is for all the guests - often hundreds, and the meal is just for the closest friends and family) takes forever and a day.

Both our wedding services will be over by early evening (7ish) as they have to start late because of the weather, but the party will go on for ever and ever (until 1am at least).

Yeah it's true that due to the very hot weather in Cyprus (about 38 degrees on most days in the summer), most people have their wedding after 4 or 5pm as the weather is a bit cooler by that time.

And yes as Owl mentioned, the reception is seperate than the dinner. You can invite anyone (even distant relative or friends) to the church and reception. In Cyprus, it's normal to invite people that themselves have invited you to either their own wedding or their daughter's or son's wedding. If you don't invite them, they might misunderstand and it's considered more polite to do so.

Also during the reception, the bride and groom stand next to each other with parents on each side while all the invited guests arrive and congratulate them. The only bad thing about it is that it can get very tiring for the bride and groom as they have to stand in the same place for about 2 hours until all the guests have congratulated them.

I have been to English weddings where the reception was bigger, before and quite separate from the meal and other ones where it was more the reverse. That line up for congratulations is also not unfamiliar. However, it is probably matched more by the commiserations line-up at funerals. There seems to be a very wide variety of customs in England (even limiting this to christian ones). I have no idea whether Greek arrangements are more uniformly followed but it sounds like you are saying they are.

From what I gather, there does seem to be a "form" to middle-class weddings in Cyprus, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the same in Greece. Cyprus is a very small country (population about the same as Manchester), and so I suppose it's simpler for everyone to fit in with the same customs. Greece, on the other hand, is a large country, which has many many islands too, probably all with their own traditional way of doing things. Certainly the wedding in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" (Greeks in New York) was very different from the ones in Cyprus. For a start, the Cyprus ones are bigger and fatter.

There certainy is a *form* in Cyprus but of course you don't have to follow it if you don't like it For me and Owl we have decided to have speeches at the dinner party and that is not at all common in greek weddings.

Our wedding is known as the modern version of a greek wedding that most people have these days in Cyprus. There is no conventional or traditional style to it. Greek traditional weddings are in a lot of ways different to the modern ones.

One of the striking features of a traditional greek wedding is at the dinner party when the bride and groom are dancing and everyone starts putting money on them instead of giving the money presents in an envelope.

Well, I think that the ceremony sounds just beautiful.

Methos

The circling thing sounds fun and the dancing. I'd be a bit concerned whether they were going to use blutak or pins to put the money on you though.