The best wedding venues in Greece

Start with the number, not the view

Every honest conversation about a Greek wedding begins with the guest count, because the geography is unforgiving about it. A caldera terrace on Santorini seats twenty five to sixty people. A hilltop estate in the Peloponnese seats as many as you can transport. No budget bridges that gap.

So the rule is simple. Under fifty guests, the islands are open to you and they will give you frames nowhere else can. Between fifty and eighty, the islands become difficult and expensive and start demanding compromises you will feel on the day. Above eighty, the mainland is the answer, and pretending otherwise costs money and disappointment in roughly equal measure.

The mainland, for scale and privacy

• Amanzoe, Porto Heli. A hilltop of pale colonnades above the Argolic gulf with an amphitheatre cut into the slope, pavilions and villas spread across the estate, and a beach club in the bay below. Two and a half hours by road from Athens, which means no ferry, no wind clause and no supplier logistics problem. It is the most private large scale wedding address in the country and it has its own field guide page.
• Spetses. Twenty minutes by boat from Porto Heli, car free, with the Poseidonion Grand at its centre. Old Athenian shipping families have summered here for a century, which is exactly why it stays quiet.
• Hydra. Roughly forty minutes out, with no cars and no scooters at all, donkeys and stone steps instead. Impractical for a large wedding and unbeatable for a day after session.
• The Athens Riviera. Vouliagmeni and Lagonissi, for couples doing the civil paperwork in Athens and wanting one glamorous dinner on the water before they travel on.
• Costa Navarino, Messinia. Further west, large scale, golf and beach resorts, better suited to a three day family programme than to a single cinematic day.

The islands, for the frame

• Santorini. The most recognisable wedding backdrop in Europe and the most contested. Small terraces, one sunset, and a crowd that arrives for it. Worth it if your list is small and you plan around the sunset slot rather than depending on it. Our Santorini field notes and island venue shortlist go through it properly.
• Mykonos. Private villa estates on the south coast, the best party infrastructure in the Aegean, and the strongest meltemi wind of anywhere on this list. Choose it when the celebration is the point.
• Corfu and the Ionian. Green, Venetian and softer, with a gentler light than the Cyclades and no meltemi to speak of. The best choice for couples who found Santorini too hard edged.
• Paros and Antiparos. Cycladic architecture without the caldera premium, growing quickly, and still comparatively unbooked.
• Crete. Large enough to hold anything, with the Elounda resorts at the luxury end, and far enough south that the season runs longer than anywhere else in Greece.

What separates a good Greek venue from a photogenic one

Four things, and only one of them is the view.

• Shade at the wrong hour. Between eleven and four the Aegean light is close to unusable for portraits. A venue with mature trees, colonnades or a covered terrace is worth more than one with a better horizon and no cover.
• A wind plan that already exists. From mid July to early September the meltemi runs hard down the Cyclades. Ask the venue what happens to your dinner at force six. If the answer is improvised, that is your answer.
• Distance from the crowd. On the islands the difference between a great venue and a merely famous one is usually a hundred metres of public path.
• Who holds the timings. Some properties run their own events team, others expect your planner to. Neither is wrong, but knowing which applies before you book decides how your day is actually run.

Then the paperwork, which is not difficult

A civil marriage in Greece needs a birth certificate and a certificate of no impediment for each party, apostilled and translated into Greek, with most documents issued within three months of the date. The file goes to the local municipality and you stay one working day after the ceremony to sign the certificate at the town hall. Start three to six months out and it is entirely routine.

The full legal detail, the meltemi and the regional differences are in our Greece field notes. What photography costs on the island is set out in the Santorini cost guide. Couples comparing this sea with the coast we know best usually read our Italy field notes in the same sitting, and the editions page sets out where our own commissions begin.