Wedding in greece/italy

tbkbt

Hey everyone just looking to check a few details as i'm guessing a few of you have been through this before.
I am looking at getting married in either italy or greece next year and we have been looking at minimum residencies, for italy it seems like 3 days to be the norm which we are fine with. Then for greece it seems to vary between 8 working days to the day before, different companies have told us different things. We have been in contact with hotels on rhodes and they dont say about any minimum residency but olympic weddings and thomas cook both say 7/8 days.
The reason were trying to find out is that we will only be able to get 2 weeks holiday from work at that time of year so would like to spend the 2nd week on our honeymoon somewhere completely different.
Also for the wedding my fiance has decided its going to be on a beach, thats fine in greece but i see in italy they have a law that states it must be in a town hall, or other civil building.
We know we can do the "proper" part of the wedding several days before very low key at the town hall then a symbollic"our proper" wedding on a beach or anywhere of our choosing. I was wondering if anyone had any experience of doing this and how it all worked out? We also heard from one wedding company that said they had a minister that could conduct the ceremony in english(no need for translator) and he had a special degree that let him do the whole civil wedding on the beach without a trip to a town hall first?
Thanks for any help you can offer

yellowcrocus

Hi,

I am in the process of planning a wedding in Italy in 2014 with about 35 close friends. They do have strict rules in Italy on where you can hold the wedding, also as many of the town halls are very historic buildings it is comparatively very expensive e.g. we were looking at 1500e just to get married at the City Hall near where we are staying. Hence we are doing a low key registry office ceremony in the UK before we fly and a symbolic ceremony in the villa gardens, which will be beautiful and also saves us having to bus everyone out and back for the ceremony. It also means the ceremony can be personal to us whereas in Italy a civil ceremony follows a very strict script.

We fly out the view our villa and meet with vendors in April...I can hardly wait!

Good luck whatever you decide.

joho

Greece is 5 days. We got married in Lindos, in the grounds of St Pauls Chapel. I have seen pics of weddings on the beach as part of a package with a hotel in Lindos. Can't remember any hotel names at the moment, but if you Google Lindos Weddings you should get some results.

Enjoy your planning.
Jo x

tbkbt

thanks for your replies.
it does seem that italy is very strict so we may be ruling it out for now. were finding lots of nice hotels and planners in greece so i think thats looking like a better option,
thanks again

aya-weddings

Actually, in Greece there is no legal requirement regarding the needed time for staying in the country.
You can very well come today and get married today :T
Hope this helps