One Year Anniversary
Our Anniversary was just a few weeks ago, our first year of marriage. We were married in Athens, Greece on a very, very hot night on the steps of the National Library of Greece just before midnight. That, you might say, is a weird time of night and place to be wedded and you wouldn’t be wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be that way but as traveling often does, we had a few twist and turns along the way.
We flew out of New York but the flight was delayed for over two hours. Even after boarding we had more delays with sick passengers and other drama preventing the plane from pushing away. Once we landed in Athens we did not have a gate for our plane since we had arrived past our designated time. So we waited and waited and waited to deplane. Carol had planned for a mid morning arrival, leisurely afternoon in the hotel before meeting our photographer for photos. The plan was to exchange vows overlooking the Parthenon in the distance after the photo shoot.
Instead, we had to rush from the airport after a late afternoon arrival and check into the hotel. We had less than an hour to quickly shower, dress, do hair, and allow Carol to do her make-up. Our photographer was very kind and accommodated our delays. My sister and niece had accompanied us on this trip to share in the ceremony and a cruise to the Greek Isles.
We decided to ride the underground metro for a short ride in stifling hot 100 degree weather to the meeting point. However, once we arrived we found ourselves in the middle of a political rally of hundreds if not thousands of people waiting to hear the president of Greece give a speech. We navigated through the crowds eventually climbing a steep hill on foot (Carol in a dress and heels) and all of us sweating profusely, many, many hours later than originally planned.
We settled down as best we could having traveled and barely sleeping for 36 hours since the previous morning. We posed for wedding photos. After finishing the photos we decided to eat dinner first before we exchanged our vows. It was a lovely meal since we had not eaten since the over night flight many hours earlier.
Parthenon and Acropolis at Sunset
By now it was 10pm, dark and all the great overlook spots still very crowded. Our local photographer suggested another location. The library she said would be a good venue for photos and low key, no onlookers at that hour, and good lighting. Carol was now carrying her shoes and going barefoot. So after another long walk of 20 minutes across town we arrived to exchange our vows before midnight.
National Library of Greece
We had both prepared our vows in advance. And Carol came up with the idea of using a hand-binding ribbon with the colors of the Greek flag to be placed around our hands. This is an old tradition when you are exchanging vows and a clergy person or “official” can’t be present at the ceremony. And since we were in Greece, this technically wasn’t a legal ceremony anyway, so we used the hand-binding ribbon (stolen idea from Outlander series) as our way of making it official.
Finally, after saying our vows, hugs all around from our intimate group, we made our way back to the hotel to end our marathon wedding day, exhausted. It was a heck of a first day of marriage and a crazy fun way to start of our vacation.
For more details and booking information, visit our upcoming trip.
Matt Wolfe, B.F.A. from University of S. Florida, Carol Birkner, B.S.E. from ETSU
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