The flags of Greece and Scotland recently flew proudly over a breathtakingly beautiful bay in the Greek island of Cephalonia, proclaiming the marriage of my son Eric to his Greek wife Tania. And the guests gathering on the rocky foreshore were equally international, hailing from Scotland, several other European countries, the US and New Zealand.
Eric and Tania have always loved the sea, so this was the perfect place to celebrate their union. Tania and her maids of honour arrived in a suitably decorated fishing boat, and after disembarking she was led by her father to a wedding arch, where Eric and his brother Tom awaited them.
The couple wanted their wedding to reflect its natural surroundings: the arch should be made with weathered driftwood, not a cheesy off-the-peg model; some of the flowers should be varieties that grow at the back of beaches and they should be blue and white, to represent the sea and its incomparable sandy beaches.
So, with this in mind, I spent much of our holiday scouring the island’s beaches for driftwood moulded by winter storms to goodly shapes. On the day of the wedding, Tom and I laboured under the scorching sun to build the simple arch we hoped the couple would like.
As a symbol of this Greco-Scottish union, we placed thistles in sand round the base of the arch. Onopordum illyricum is native to Greece, while the thistle genus is, of course, our national symbol. Collecting the thistles was no picnic. Eric, my wife Jane and I found a large patch of this fearsomely spiny but statuesque specimen about 1000 metres up Enos, the island’s highest mountain. After gently dislodging a mass of shiny beetles, we gingerly and all too painfully cut round the stems. As a welcome relief after this agony, we cut bunches of dried Greek grass heads, adding to the Scottish ones we had brought over.
The whole family took part in the preparations. At the centre of the arch, we suspended a flower ball Jane had made. Its base comprised sprigs of olives, together with Daucus carota, the same wild carrot that grows round the Scottish coast. She included the big grey flower heads of Echinops sphaerocephalus and the electric-blue stems of Eryngium creticum, which looked as if they had been spray-painted.
In keeping with the wedding’s theme, the bride’s bouquet was subtly attractive – no showy blaze of imported Kenyan blooms for Tania. Jane was responsible for making the bouquet and, as a stranger to Greek temperatures, had to test how well flowers such as Myrtus communis stood up to the heat. She found its delicate, scented flowers would stay fresh for a vital 24 hours. Lavender (salvia) and dianthus were used, and a few daucus were added for extra white.
Unfortunately, Tania’s elderly aunt was too frail to travel from Athens, but she was represented by agapanthus and Plumbago auriculata, specially picked for the bouquet from her Cephalonian garden.
Before a mix of Greek and English-speaking guests, bride and groom repeated their vows in both languages. This bilingual approach applied to everything except a Burns poem.
When the guests then left the rocks, they walked a short distance through the terraced garden of a nearby villa which Eric and Tania had hired for the reception and to accommodate some of their friends. It was a jaw-dropping property, with spacious balconies overlooking a stunning bay, with mighty Enos looming in the background. Since the welcoming sea was a stone’s throw away, some of the more intrepid guests couldn’t resist its delights at four in the morning, I’m told.
And at the reception, Jane used native flowers, sand, shells and tiny boats to create a special table design that cleverly reflected a maritime scene. A few of Eric’s botanist colleagues from Switzerland helped set out the tables and communication was so easy with everyone using Botanical Latin.
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