Festive Greek Weddings

Greek weddings are highly festive events steeped in tradition with week-long preparations and days of feasting, dancing, and singing.  Although Greek Orthodox wedding customs vary from village to village and region to region, a few traditions remain universal.  A koumbaros or koumbara, best man or woman, acts as a sponsor and performs many aspects of the wedding ceremony.  At the church the koumbaros exchanges the wedding rings three times to indicate true faith, harmony, and love.  This rite completed, the bride and groom slip their bands onto their right ring fingers.  Greek couples traditionally wear their wedding rings on their left hands while engaged and on their right hands once married.  This placement stems from the right hand being the hand that God blesses, the hand to which Christ ascended and the direction to which those who inherit the earth will go.

Engaging in the heart of the ceremony, the koumbaros then places the wedding crowns, or stefana, over the bride’s and groom’s heads.  He passes the stefana over their heads three times to symbolize the couple’s unity as well as the holy trinity.   Made of metal or vines and twigs and covered in flowers, jewels, or silver and gold paper, the crowns are joined together by a single white ribbon, connoting love and commitment.  

After drinking wine from a common cup, the bride and groom are led around the altar table three times by either the koumbaros or the priest.  Meanwhile, a hymn is sung and prayer is said in Greek.  In early times the priest would then offer honey-dipped almonds to the newlyweds.  Today the ceremony ends with jubilant guests throwing both rice and koufetta, sugar-coated almonds, at the newly married couple.  The rice stands for fertility while the koufetta represents the bittersweet aspect of life.              

Another wedding standard involves the preparation of the wedding bed.  On the night before the wedding the bride’s mother and grandmother cover the bed with flower petals, coins, and koufetta to ensure love, prosperity, and fertility.  They may also engage in a baby-rolling ceremony.  Here the babies of family and friends are gently rolled on the matrimonial mattress to encourage a fertile union.     

In some towns the koumbaros leads a pre-wedding procession from the bride’s home.   Together the koumbaros, bride, close friends and family walk to the church.  In some instances a strolling violinist will serenade the group.  Outside the church door the bride may meet and kiss the groom.  He will have arrived earlier, his appearance marked by the blare of car horns.  If meeting outside the church, the groom hands his bride a bouquet of flowers, which she will later throw into the expectant crowd.  Together they cross the threshold.  The guests follow and, except for the elderly or infirmed, stand during the service.  Men remain on one side of the church, women on the other.  In hopes of a sweet marriage the bride may have hidden a small sugar cube in one of her gloves.  

Elsewhere, the bride and her parents may share a glass of wine on the doorstep of the family home before leaving for the church.  The bride takes the last sip of wine then throws the glass onto the ground.  Breaking the glass marks the end of her old life with her parents and the beginning of a new life with her betrothed.  

On some islands the wedding ceremony ends with the bride and groom eating honey and walnuts, symbols of sweetness and fertility, from silver spoons.  Walnuts are the nut of choice because they break into four parts, representing the bride, groom, and their families of origin.  In Crete double-barrel shotguns are fired into the air, causing guests to remark that ‘sometimes there is a funeral as well as a wedding.’                         

Throughout Greece the married couple and their friends and family gather at a taverna or posh dining establishment after the wedding for an evening of eating, drinking, and dancing.  Large affairs with as many as 800 participants, the reception features copious amounts of wine, music and dancing until dawn and, in some instances, fireworks.  Musicians playing guitars, violins, bouzoukis, ouds, and clarinets accompany joyous dancers with songs from across the land. The kalamatianos, where men and women join hands and dance in a circle, and syrtaki or “Zorba’s dance,” where people dance with arms linked on shoulders, remain perennial favorites.  Another reception standard is the money dance.  For the privilege of a dance with the bride guests must first pin paper currency onto her dress.   For good luck a member of the immediate family tosses a plate onto the dance floor.  Others invariably join in the tradition of breaking plates and much laughter and shouting ensues.   

At the end of the reception guests receive bonbonierres, packages filled with an odd number of white chocolate-covered almonds.  These favors are filled not only with sweet candy but also with rich symbolism.  The egg-shaped treats stand for fertility as well as for the new life that begins with marriage.  The white of the chocolate indicates purity.  The odd number of almonds signifies indivisibility for the bride and groom shall henceforth exist as one.      

When the new bride first arrives at her in-laws’ home, she participates in a ritual known as the ‘sweetening of the bride.’  Several variations of this custom exist.  In one the bride dips her fingers in honey then makes the sign of the cross in hopes of a good relationship with her mother-in-law.  In another account the bride throws a pomegranate into her new home.  The inevitable scattering of the pomegranate’s seeds will ensure wealth and fertility.  An additional version has the bride tossing a piece of iron onto the in-laws’ roof to demonstrate the strength of her new home.  Lastly, the bride’s mother-in-law may ply her with red-colored sweets such as pomegranates and grapes so that the bride will retain the rosy color of youth.