Big Fat Greek Wedding!

Yesterday was my.... 3rd cousin (I think!?!) Melanie's wedding. She got married to a greek man called Yianni so the wedding was... Greek!

It was definately an experience, traditionally instead of waiting in the church for the bride we all had to wait outside and then the first ceremony (there's 2) is meant to be done outside as well except they had theirs in the church. Melanie was 40 minutes late!!!! It was getting a bit chilly. We were given these little bags with rice inside when we went in not having a clue why! Then there was the 2 ceremonies which were really just one long one. The priest was so funny! He was speaking out of the book but I'm not even sure if it was English or Greek cos his English wasn't very good so when when he spoke I couldn't understand a word of it. I say spoke, he actually sang! I got a little giggling fit inbetween cos me and my family kept exchanging looks of 'what the hell?!' lol. Then I saw other Greek people opening their bags of rice so I just copied and then Melanie and Yianni had to do the 'dance', which was just walking round in a circle around the alter thing, being led by the priest whilst he carried on singing Greek stuff from the Bible. So when they did this everyone randomly starting throwing the rice out of the bags, it was so funny cos obviously people at the back couldn't throw it far enough so you could just feel all this rice being thrown on your back! I tried to throw mine and it landed in Yianni's mum's hair! After the church bit we were given these flowers with sugar almonds in them as a present.

The reception was right next to the church and inside there was a band playing traditional Greek music which was really loud! The starter was prawns, I just took one look and was like 'noooo, I'm not eating that!' It still had it's eyes on and little swimming legs, ewwwww! Then everyone started dancing but have you ever tried to dance to Greek music??? Me, mum, Andrew and my aunty joined in, it was just a massive circle of people dancing round. But then... this is the best bit... came the smashing plates! It was so bizarre. There were just piles and piles of plates coming from nowhere and you just smash them on the floor, it's so much fun, but made such a mess and one of the Greek relatives cut her toe really badly! And at the same time people were throwing flowers everywhere.

The Greeks really know how to celebrate.