When choosing a venue for your wedding in Cyprus, there are so many beautiful spaces. I find there is also quite a lot of advice and suggestions of what to think of when picking your venue.
So I thought it would be helpful to talk through how we chose our venue and a reflection on what guided our decision making.
Identifying the Priorities
Very quickly, we were able to articulate the elements of the day that were most important to one or both of us. These reflected our values, and held the most meaning for us. This directed our search process of a venue for our wedding in Cyprus.
Of course, these are personal to us, and may well be different for you. But hopefully this is helpful to hear of our thought process – and will enable you to also really dig down into the parts of the day that hold most meaning and value to you.
Our 3 main considerations when deciding on the venue to celebrate our marriage in Cyprus were
- Ceremony Space
- Guest Numbers
- Food and Dining Experience
Ceremony Space
For me, the ceremony was the most important part of our day. This was the element that I spent the most time designing and considering what was going to be said and included. Marios was keen (as was I), to incorporate some elements of the Greek Orthodox service within our ceremony. And it was important for me to have a Christian ceremony.
I envisaged this as outside and wanted it to have a traditional feel – in a courtyard or stonework or pillars or outside of a church.
Guest Numbers
We didn’t want to put restrictions on how many people we invited. It was tricky, because when you have a destination wedding, we didn’t expect everyone to be able to come. We knew there were people who wouldn’t be able to attend. And so we really didn’t know if we were looking at choosing a venue to cater for 80 people or 180. But we thought it was likely to be around the 120-130 person mark (which it was in the end).
But that was a consideration when choosing our venue. Going back to the first priorty – the ceremony space – lots of ceremony spaces could only cater for 50-80 people. Or the spaces for dining were limited – for example some outside spaces could again only cater for the smaller numbers and offered inside spaces only for larger numbers.
Food and dining experience
Although some of our guests are from Cyprus, the majority were not. We wanted to celebrate and show off the amazing food that Cyprus offers. And for it to be a real feast. So we looked for a venue which would reflect that. We weren’t interested in fine dining type food, or canapes like spring rolls. We also chose to have an open bar. We wanted to show our love and gratitude to our guests, for being there and for their roles in our lives, with the ability to eat, drink and be merry and enjoy the whole experience. And we wanted to eat outside, with festoon type lighting.
Availability
Those 3 elements for us, were the guides in searching for a venue for our Cyprus wedding. And then finally – it was availability!
We were engaged in September, and wanted to get married within the year. Preferably not in July or August. We had initially had a few other thoughts, such as trying for the school holidays, as we had friends who are teachers, and of course people with school age children. But even that proved difficult as the Northern Ireland school holidays are different from the English school holidays.
Most venues could only offer us one, or maybe two dates – so we decided not to be fussy about timings. And booked within 6-8 weeks of getting engaged and without seeing the venue in order to secure our date!
Our Wedding Venue
I cannot speak highly enough of Liopetro.
Michalis was the lead in booking the venue, helping with queries and co-ordinated the day. He was incredible. We were in very safe hands. And on the day there were lots of other staff members looking after us all. They were so attentive, gracious, and friendly. And an absolute pleasure to be around.
The venue itself fully lived up to all we were hoping. The surrounding village, Kouklia, and fields were beautiful for our photographs. The food was I think the best we have ever eaten in Cyprus, and comes highly recommended! Our guests are still mentioning it to me!
Final thoughts
So my final words of advice, are to try and identify the parts of the day that are most important to you, and use this to guide your choice of location and then venue style. Think broadly. The details of decor can be delved into later.
This article describes our wedding day in more detail along with our suppliers.
Please do feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or are looking for any advice or thoughts. I love talking about weddings and would love to hear from you!
Previous Post:
