We said Yes in front of God!
As you already know, we had our civil union in September 2019 in our soul place, By The Lake, that was built and decorated especially for our magical day! (if you haven’t seen it yet, I have a blogpost right HERE).
But getting married in front of God was the big deal for us and we’ve carefully planned every detail for this moment so we were supposed to say YES in May 2020 in Greece. Unfortunately, the pandemic was right around the corner ready to mess up our plans! Even so, we are proud to say WE ARE THE ONES THAT DEFEATED THE PANDEMIC AND GOT MARRIED IN ANOTHER COUNTRY IN FREAKING 2020! What a crazy ride!
After a failed first attempt, we’ve managed to postpone everything and set a new wedding date for the 29th of September! I have already started writing a new article where I will tell you all the details regarding a wedding during a pandemic and what problems we have faced in organizing it. This post is only about magic and love, I won’t let negative things ruin it J
Why Greece?
I’ve got a lot of questions regarding why we chose Greece and, most particularly, Crete. We knew we wanted a small religious ceremony and Greece was the perfect place since we wanted an Orthodox Church on a beautiful island. Crete was our chosen island for the religious ceremony because we’ve found a Romanian priest and Santorini for our after wedding photo shooting and honeymoon. We love this country, it has spectacular views and places, amazing food and it’s close to our home country, Romania.
It was also a good choice regarding the COVID-19 situation because we were only required to present a negative PCR Test and no quarantine time.
The Journey
There we were – one day before boarding our flight to Greece, praying for negative results on our PCR COVID 19 Tests. You can imagine the joy when we saw the result on our email and we could finally start packing and arranging details for our wedding trip. We still had one more hiccup – negative tests for our family and friends and we are happy to say this was a success as well.
When the plane landed in Crete, I had tears in my eyes – it was actually happening! After so much uncertainty, we were getting married in Greece and there was nothing that could stop us!
The People
Since we already had a big wedding in Romania (130 means a big wedding for us opposite to what a big wedding in Romania usually looks like), this time we wanted to keep it small, with our closest family members and friends. We were supposed to be 20, but my bestie, Oana, and her fiancé, Toufic, couldn’t make it from Dubai because of the restrictions 🙁
My soul sister, Berta, made it from Italy and my best friend, Babbu, came from Great Britain and I was so happy to have them by my side along with my mother and Gabriel’s family. Ioana & Vasi who took care of the photography and videography part of the holiday also became family during this trip so we’ve created memories for a lifetime together.
The Big Day
It was a beautiful Tuesday morning and we woke up among our closest ones in a beautiful villa in Crete. THE BIG DAY had come. Gabriel was not allowed to see me until I was ready to head to Church. Even though we’ve planned everything as simple as possible, I was still extremely emotional to finally get God’s approval regarding our love.
Vale, my almost sister-in-law, helped me with make-up and hair (and she did an amazing job), mommy and the girls were there to get me dressed in my beautiful Rhea Costa dream dress, Ioana & Vasi took beautiful shots and videos to always remember those moments.
After a 2-hours drive with mommy and my childhood besties, Berta & Babbu, we have arrived to our beautiful white church in the port of Heraklion. Everyone was wearing white and they looked so beautiful. The emotions kept getting bigger and bigger. Hubbs took my hand and we’ve entered the Church with full hearts!
We got married in a Romanian Church with two Romanian Priests in Greece which was our biggest dream and a very hard task to accomplish 🙂 The religious ceremony took around one hour and we even had a Church choir. Explaining our feelings into words would be too difficult so I will let pictures talk for themselves.
Will be back with a new article regarding the boat trip we took after the ceremony and the villa party.
Photographer: Ioana Porav
Videographer: Vasile Porav
Dress: Rhea Costa Bridal
Shoes: Casadei
Wedding Bands: Cartier
Hats: Palaria Dadarlat
Stationery: Charmink Calligraphy
