Botanical Park of Crete Wedding

Charlotte & Thomas flew in from the United Kingdon with family and friends for their picturesque wedding on the island of Crete. Their wedding ceremony took place in the foothills of the White Mountains of Chania at the Botanical Park in a day filled with lush greenery and stunning scenery.

Botanical Park Of Crete Wedding

How did you meet?

We met on a freezing cold UK night in March 2012. (Maybe that’s one of the reasons we decided to get married in Crete). Charlotte worked with my best friend’s girlfriend who invited me to join them for some after work drinks. We instantly clicked, and as they say, the rest is history.

Where did you get married and why did you choose this place?

By the groom Tomo:

Having grown up in the UK we had both been to many ‘Summer’ weddings in the UK that had been on rainy days. We decided we really wanted to get married somewhere the sun would be shining, but also somewhere special to us. In the summer of 2015, we had been on holiday to the Chania región of Crete and we had fallen in love with it. We loved the atmosphere and how relaxed everyone was. One afternoon we had gone to the Botanical Park of Crete (in the hills 20 km south of Chania). We had had a glass of wine whilst watching the breathtaking sunset over the Cretan White mountains.

When we got engaged the following April Charlotte instantly suggested the Botanical gardens for the wedding as it has an amphitheatre overlooking the hills that would be perfect for the ceremony,

In June 2016 we first met Crete for Love team, and Anna showed us a few further venues. In particular, she took us to the Manousakis Winery that was the most beautiful winery. It is situated 15 minutes from the Botanical gardens. It was whilst relaxing on the beach, watching another perfect sunset, that we decided we would do the Ceremony at the botanical park of Crete and the reception at the Manousakis Winery.

The idea was born but then the planning started. Anna and the Crete for Love team introduced us to some truly fantastic vendors. In particular, Green Factory who did the flowers were spectacular and exceeded our expectations.

We were lucky enough to have 104 of our Friends and family fly out to the Crete to join us for our wedding. On the day the Botanical gardens looked like something out of a fairy tale. The flowers were above all expectation and the services from the staff were amazing.

The real highlight for me was when Charlotte walked down the aisle. We had George a local guitarist sing a versión of the BeeGees How Deep is Your Love, that was perfect for the day. The late afternoon light showed Charlotte’s dress off so vibrantly that it seemed you could see her aura, she looked stunning.

After the ceremony, the guests were transported to the Winery that had also been dressed to an incredible standard. The atmosphere was perfect and the evening went better than we could have dreamed. I think the highlight for many was Charlotte’s dad’s speech. It was a perfect mix of humour and emotion. It seemed everyone was laughing and crying simultaneously.

Tell us about your wedding reception

As many of our guests had never been to Crete before it was important to us that we had typical Cretan food as they could get a taste of the local food.

The decor was not too difficult to organise as the winery is so naturally beautiful that we did not need a huge amount of accessories. For the table decoration we had a specific vision to incorporate greek style design and luckily we found some great ‘urn’ style vases in the UK. We also had wedding favours as we wanted our guests to take back a small part of Crete with them. For this, we arranged a small pot of honey for each guest as well as a bag of traditional mountain tea. We used local vendors to support the community.

For dinner, we ate local dishes that were shared on the tables family style, along with the local wine from the winery.