Lake Vouliagmeni, Athens. 22.10.
I’ve been to a couple of weddings in my thirty-two years – one intimate, one magnificent – but I’ve never been to one quite like this. The backdrop is totally different. No Ed Sheeran, no Pharrell Williams, no Walk the Moon. Instead, the haunting double-reeded hum of a zurna floating over the hypnotic beat of a daouli drum. Cicadas screeching in an almost perfect polyrhythm. Every now and then, an enormous praying mantis – known to the Greeks as the Virgin Mary’s little horse – flutters past the blue lights, casting a fleeting shadow over the dancefloor.
I did always love a ceilidh, but this is something very different. It feels… older, somehow.
The festivities started last night, with a motorcade ride to the bride’s house to dance by the light of a scarlet flare. Summoned by the revving of no less than six motorbike engines, the bride and her family came down into the street to dance with the groom, his brother and Peter, a colourful character from Naxos. It was only a flying visit – some lingering tradition of not spending too much time with the bride the night before the wedding, perhaps – and after the dances were over and the flares were used up we rode back home.
I spent the morning recovering lost sleep (I’m still adjusting to European time) and made it over to Alex’s flat just after three o’clock in the afternoon – in perfect time to catch the ritual shaving of the groom. There seem to be all sorts of traditions to a Greek wedding. As one of the guests of honour, I had to offer him one of his wedding shoes, while his parents set his suit upon his shoulders.
Alex is something of a motorhead, so a motorcade was waiting once again as we set out for the wedding. Each motorcycle had a white ribbon trailing from the handlebars, but the jewel in the crown was a shining scarlet Cadillac hired out for the occasion. Alex insisted I sit in the front, so I had front row seats – quite literally – to the wedding procession as it sped down the highway through central Athens and beyond to the coast.
Alex and Elena chose a beautiful little chapel on a forested hill at the southernmost point of Glyfada. The priest – a young man, but the perfect caricature of an Eastern Orthodox saint – arrived dressed all in blue and smoking a cigarette, but for the ceremony he reappeared in black and gold.
The Greeks seem far more interested in the ritual over the written word: there don’t appear to be many speeches at all in these proceedings, beyond the magic of the Orthodox ceremony itself – which is sung almost in its entirety. No hymns, no readings from the family and friends, no sermon. Just the magic of tradition.
The celebration is taking place just a few minutes away by the shore of Lake Vouliagmeni, under the illuminated walls of a great limestone cliff. The music is predominantly Greek – only every so often does an English or Spanish song slip through the cracks. It feels like being back in the Middle East – a reminder that, in spite of the apparent universality of English, our dominion extends only so far as our influence. Here, as in Jordan, Morocco and Spain, there is a fierce devotion to the ways things were.
In our rush to become a cosmopolitan country, I sometimes feel we lost some of this magic back home in England.
I have no idea what my wedding would look like, because – frankly – I have no idea where I will be. I have dated an Afrikaner, a Pole, a Brazilian, an English girl, an Iraqi and an American – each a different nationality, with radically different perspectives on the future. I suppose I’d like something traditional – being an incorrigible romantic at heart – but until she appears, I remain open to seeing where the winds of fate carry me.
The only thing I know for certain is that, if and when my time comes, it will not be in England. Somehow I’ve always known.
If it could be even half of what I’ve been a part of today, it would be the wedding of my dreams.
Friendship in the old mould. The kind you read about in books. In the decade we’ve known each other, Alex and I have seen each other four times. Once, when we worked together for a couple of weeks at a summer school many years ago. Twice, when he was in London for a show last year. Three times, when he flew out to London with Elena to invite me to the wedding, and here we are at number four. Friendships that survive time, distance and the silence of working life are the most precious of all.
I have already had the most incredible summer of my life, but this just puts a seal on the whole thing. There’s not a day of the last seven weeks that I wouldn’t relive. And you know what? After eight years shut away in a boarding school, I think I’ve earned it.
Here’s to the summer of 2026. A red letter year in every possible way. May it be the first of many more to come. BB x
The Book of Barnabas 