Wedding receptions in general on Crete.

What happens when a cretan couple decides to get married.
It is common and tradition to invite as many people as possible to the wedding to show how important the couple is and how much they are loved.

Everybody invites people; the bride and bridegroom, the parents, the brothers and sisters and the witnesses of both sides of the families.
In the somewhat smaller villages the wedding is even announced over the speakers, to welcome everybody to the happening.

In the bigger cities invitations are given out. An average wedding is between 500 and 1000 invitations .
Getting married in the church demands that you announce your wedding by means of an advertisement in the newspaper. This is  as a replacement for an announcement over the speakers. The newspaper will be looked at by the priest. At the same time it is being checked that both bride and bridegroom are Christians and thus have been baptized at one stage in their lives. Whether this is Catholic or Protestant, it does not matter.
It appears that is someone has not been baptized, then this needs to take place before the couple can be joined in wedlock.

In Greece it is possible to get married three times in church. After the third time one can only get married legally at the “town hall”.
The divorce rate in Greece is getting closer to the numbers in Western Europe. One reason might be that women get more and more independent. They now earn money themselves and when it comes to a divorce they are still able to support themselves instead of having to rely on family, which in the past used to be a disgrace.