We decided to create a site about our wedding to give people who are interested in planning their own an idea of how we did ours. 

Since we were planning for a destination wedding, during our own planning other websites of couples experiences helped us tremendously.  Planning a destination wedding is definitely not easy. Click on the thumbnails for larger pictures and enjoy! 

By the way, our photographers for the event were Vlad Fridlyand and Anton Frid.  They were great and we thank them for all their hard work!

We thought it would be a great idea to have the wedding on the beautiful island of Santorini in Greece.  We researched (mostly on the web) different hotels, possible venues for the wedding ceremony and and reception, discount airfare, group excursions, for months before.  Once we finalized on Santorini, we sent out to our friends and family Save the Date cards. 

Since we didn't have a good idea of the number of people who would be able to make it, it was difficult to pick a place. We knew that we wanted to have the ceremony with a view overlooking caldera but also wanted to have a sit down dinner with music and dancing after.

We finally chose the venue to be Selene. With two terraces (one for the ceremony and cocktail hour and the other for the dinner reception) we would be OK at Selene for space for up to 80 guests outdoors. They also have an indoor area that seats up to 100 or so people in case of inclement weather.

This type of place was hard to find as most restaurants on the caldera are very small and don't seat many tables, let alone dancing space and an area to perform the ceremony.  I still needed help with other arrangements (flowers, music, etc.).  After some searching (also on the web), I found a woman named Shirley Chiarolanzio who is a wedding coordinator in Fira, Santorini.

She booked the mayor of Fira town, Mr. Kavalaris, to perform the ceremony at  Selene on July 5th and started working with me on other details. Things were finally coming together. She was so responsive and really great to work with! 

We sent the Wedding Invitations to those guests who responded to the Save the Date cards along with some info on hotels, airfare, and package trips to Greece.
 

After all the hotels we looked into, we ended up choosing the El Greco Hotel. We made all the reservations through Epic Travel Agency with Loucas Avgerinos in Fira.  Loucas  was great!  The El Greco is not right on the caldera but close enough to town to walk to. The staff was really helpful with everything.

When we got to Santorini on July 1st we met with Shirley and Nikitas our DJ to go over music, layout and set up for the wedding.  Nikitas also was going to do the fireworks for us.  It ended up being too windy for what we wanted, but he did end up doing some smaller fireworks.

The night before the wedding, on the 4th of July , we organized a Sunset Boat Cruise on the Thallasa (an old wooden sailboat) around Santorini for all of our guests. We ended up having 63 guests come to Santorini to be with us!

After the sunset we headed back to the Old Port and up to town to enjoy dinner at Zafora's Restaurant. It is right by the cable car entrance with an awesome view of Fira at night.  We were really impressed, the service and food were both excellent. Daniel and I had made the arrangements with George (the manager) the day before.

Santorini wedding tradition is that musicians walk with the groom and his family to pick up the bride and her family then they all go together through the streets to the ceremony. Of course if you get married in Greece, you have to have the donkey picture.

We did our version of the traditional Kraksimo and had the musicians walk accompanying Cathy, Masha and my father and I down the steps of Selene to the upper terrace to meet Daniel.

These are all pictures from the ceremony,; rings, vows, signing the registry...everything but the unity candle lighting. It was too windy! Shirley actually said it was just about the windiest day she had ever seen in Santorini (and she has been living there for years!). The ceremony was in Greek and English (Mr. Kavalaris translated).  It was probably too windy for any of our guests to hear anything but it was still nice. 

We said our vows and exchanged rings and were officially married.  This is us signing the registry.  My sister Cathy and Daniel's brother Dima also signed as our witnesses.

After the ceremony we left the terrace while everyone threw rose petals. 

And the party started! 

The back of the terrace was set up for cocktail hour.  While our guests were enjoying food and drink, we took turns with some posed photos with family and friends.  We had live traditional musicians play during this time.

The traditional musicians played Greek island music while everyone ate and drank. Our good friend Vlad (who we owe all these beautiful photos to) walked with us around town to take some shots of us in the town of Fira.  There are so many beautiful views in Fira that it is hard to decide where to pose.  The sun was setting and the reception was about to start...

We came back to the lower terrace where the dinner and dancing were starting and danced all night.  Nikitas played some great tunes and got everyone in the mood to dance.  Since Selene is in an area with lots of hotels, Evelyn would not allow the music to continue past 1am but we were able to sit and enjoy the background music from the inside area of the restaurant.

Then the fireworks started.  Of course we had a delicious cake and variety of Greek  pastries complements of Manos the baker, who Shirley recommended.  My mom aunt and I went to see him two days before the wedding and order the cake and pastries.

The finale was the belly dancer who came out and performed. She was great, and I think it was a nice way to wind down the evening.

Everything worked out great! 

To all of our close family and friends who came all the way to Santorini to be with us we can't Thank You enough!