Big Fat Cretan Wedding

My Koumbara had invited me down = on Crete, a year ago when her daughter and BIL to be had decided to marry on June 30th 2018 and so I got here this week to attend this wedding for sure. 

All went wonderful and so many relatives and friends had turned up to attend this big family event. Their relatives came not only from mainland Greece but also from the USA and friends like me from abroad.

The service in church was done by the local priest and also by a monk, who's cousin to the bride. I'd seen this monk as boy Yannis decades and decades ago and now he's monk Irinaios, former warrior in the Yugoslav wars of the Serbs against the Croations and Bosnians. He returned safely and lives & works in the monastery of Gouverneto now... and today he married his cousine.

In this picture you see what makes a Koumbaros (-os is the male version) Koumbara (-a = the female version)... the one who exchanges the weddingcrowns above the bride & groom while the priest announces them as married couple is the one who becomes Koumbaros and his wife will be Koumbara to the wedded couple and those names will be used a lifetime.