The Wedding Prequel Part 1. Ali Pasha and Pomegranates

(Please click on the photos to make them larger.)

Daughter Eleni studied folklore and mythology in college and she has always loved ritual, tradition and folklore, so she inevitably included them in her plans for her wedding to Emilio on October 10. (After all, it was an Indian astrologer who led her to the decision—before she even met Emilio—that she would be married on 10/10/10.)

Last month I wrote in detail about the wedding day itself, with its two wedding ceremonies (Catholic and Greek Orthodox) and such traditional details as the throwing of the wedding bread, the singing of wedding songs as the bride dresses, parading through Corfu town accompanied by musicians and dancers in local costume.

But the wedding traditions and rituals began long before October 10. On October third, 14 of us—family and friends who were immediately dubbed “Team Odyssey”-—met in Athens, toured the city and then flew on the fifth to Ioannina, the provincial capital of Epiros—my husband Nick’s native province.


Ioannina, a beautifully unspoiled city on the shore of an enormous lake, still has its walled Turkish city, little changed since the days when Lord Byron visited the local tyrant Ali Pasha, who housed his harem of 300 women and his vast army of Janissary soldiers inside the city walls. (If a woman in his harem displeased him, he would have her tied in a bag weighted with stones and thrown into the deep lake. It’s said that the mists rising from the lake in the morning are the ghosts of the drowned maidens.)

The plan was to drive the next day up the mountains on the winding road to Nick’s village of Lia where we would have a pre-wedding party in the Village Inn (The Xenona).

Eleni spent ten months of 2002 living in the village by herself, rebuilding the family house which lay in ruins ever since the murder of her grandmother by a firing squad of Communist guerrillas during the Greek civil war. She used that year of research and building for her travel memoir “North of Ithaka”, published by St. Martin’s Press in 2005. By the time she left, she had become so beloved by the villagers --most of whom are now elderly-- that she wanted to introduce Emilio and his family to the village and share the celebration with them all.

In Ioannina it rained, poured and thundered non-stop but we went anyway to visit the mosques in the Turkish city—now turned into museums since the Turkish occupiers were driven out in 1913. The wrought-iron cage you see above is the tomb where Ali Pasha’s headless body is buried. He was assassinated by men sent by the Sultan because the despot was getting too powerful and rebellious. His head --and his (Greek) favorite wife, who connived to let the assassins in-- were sent to the Sultan in Constantinople as proof that the tyrant was really dead.

We got ready to drive up the mountain to the village of Lia when we learned that the heavy rains had made the road impassable, but after some hours of waiting, bulldozers cleared the way and we began the twisty, vertiginous journey.


The Innkeeper, Elias Daflos, and his wife, Litsa, had prepared a feast for 85 people—everyone in the village plus Team Odyssey. Local musicians played the wailing Epirotic melodies and the foreigners among us got their first intensive lesson in Greek dancing. Above you see Team Odyssey at the table, and the dancing led by the village priest, Father Prokopi.

The next day, the weather had improved and we led a tour of the village landmarks, including the house of Eleni’s grandmother (Eleni Gatzoyiannis), which had been rebuilt and furnished to look exactly as it did when her grandmother lived there. Below are some of our group, sitting in the more modern Haidis house, which was originally built by Nick's grandfather, Kitso Haidis—and then rebuilt after the Germans burned it in 1944. On the wall over daughter Marina’s head are some of the Karagiosis shadow puppets—another ancient Greek tradition.


After our tour, we set about harvesting pomegranates from the trees of a generous villager, Lefteris Bollis and his wife Ourania—and in the process we all got soaked by the rain-laden branches. Eleni wanted to use pomegranates-- a traditional symbol of good luck and prosperity—as part of the table decorations at the wedding, and we had promised the florist in Corfu that we would bring more than a hundred fresh-picked pomegranates with us when we arrived.


Even though it was still morning, Lefteris and his wife insisted that we all come into their home to toast the wedding with their home-brewed tsipouro—the local moonshine with a staggering alcohol content.


Loading our cars with the pomegranates, we bid goodbye to the villagers and set out for the harbor of Igoumenitsa and the ferryboat that would carry us to the island of Corfu, where we would celebrate the approaching nuptials with more traditions and rituals, including the preparation of the wedding bed. But I’ll tell you about that in my next blog post.

(I put that photo of me and Eleni, just before the wedding, at the beginning of this post because so many friends asked for it.)

Planning a Wedding in Corfu

When we landed in Corfu last week, daughter Eleni was off and running to get her wedding plans together. She had informed us, about two weeks earlier, that she planned to marry Emilio in Corfu, Greece, on Oct 10 (10/10/10!) and she had already cleared the date with the church she had always dreamed of –the little peach-colored Church of Panayia Mandrakina at the base of the Fortress in Corfu Town. (That’s Eleni looking at the church above.)

She arrived with a list, which included checking out the reception site, priests, florists, DJs, musicians, cake-bakers, transportation (including horse-drawn carriages and boats) and the venues for the various nights’ activities.

Her sister Marina had already designed the logo that will mark the paperwork, (intertwined E’s for "Emilio" and "Eleni") as well as the invitations, response cards and thank-you notes, and had also assembled spread sheets of guest lists and addresses.

Within four days, everything pretty much got nailed down. I don’t want to give away all the surprises, but can tell the general plan. On Friday night, Oct 8, there will be the decorating of the wedding bed—in a fortress-view suite at the top of a small Italian mansion—now a boutique hotel-- in the old city. (Most of the guests at the wedding will be staying in garden rooms at the Corfu Palace, overlooking the harbor below.)

Traditionally for a Greek wedding the women decorate the nuptial bed with flowers and gold coins, while singing songs sure to bring tears of nostalgia to Eleni’s aunts.



Saturday, the welcome dinner–hosted by the groom and his family—will be held on a magical small island called Vidos. A boat covers the ten-minute ride from the Old Port every hour, and the captain plans to decorate his boat to honor the bride and groom. He can’t wait. Every Greek loves a wedding!

That includes Menios, the wisecracking owner of the taverna on the island, who had strong opinions about the traditional Corfiote dishes he will prepare and the singers who will provide the music for Saturday night. We should leave everything in his hands, he said.

Eleni asked for a meatless main-dish alternative for vegetarians—perhaps tomatoes and peppers stuffed with a herbed rice mixture. Menios retorted that upon tasting meatless yemista, the guests would throw the tomatoes and peppers at his head. He had a reputation to uphold! In the end, Eleni and the vegetarians won, I think.

The island of Vidos is like something out of a fairy tale. It’s completely overrun with rabbits and hares as well as pheasants—all of whom have become tame and will walk right up to you. Every night about sunset Menios makes a ritual of throwing feed to the hundreds of animals who drop by for dinner.



Sunday—the wedding day—will include two weddings—one in the Catholic Church (the Duomo) in the picturesque square which includes the Town Hall and the Opera House, followed by a parade with troubadours toward the Greek Orthodox Church for a second ceremony. (Guests who want to take a break or can’t fit into the churches are encouraged to sit at an outdoor café nearby with a celebratory drink.)

[To avert bringing on the Evil Eye, Eleni wants me to qualify all this by adding the words “weather permitting.” And I should spit a couple of times and keep a clove of garlic in my pocket.]

After the ceremonies finish and photographs are taken, everyone will file across the bridge over the moat into the old fortress and through the winding cobblestone paths down to the Corfu Sailing Club on the water’s edge, where sailboats and yachts are anchored and the lights from above shimmer in the water.

At the Sailing Club there will be music, toasts, delicious food and several surprises, but I promised not to tell.

When meeting with vendors, I learned that the Mother of the Bride has only one important job and that is “Don’t say anything and don’t engage anyone in conversation.” Eleni and her cousin Areti, a Corfu native who will be the maid of honor and koumbara of the wedding—have their own system for interviewing and negotiating, and it was clear that I could seriously mess things up by expressing an opinion or showing interest in anything.

Being a MOB is no easy task.

My husband likes to quote a friend who commented after one festive weekend: “The average Greek has more fun at a wedding than the average WASP has in a lifetime.”

I’m a life-long WASP, now transformed into a Greek MOB, and I suspect that on 10/10/10 I’ll find out if that’s true.

A Wedding with Hummingbirds

(Please click on the photos to enlarge them. See the hummingbird in the flowers upper left?)


Last weekend, we attended the wedding of my brother’s daughter, Lindsey, at the Parker Hotel in Palm Springs, CA. It was moving and beautiful for many reasons, not least the magnificent grounds and gardens of the hotel, but for me it was very special in an unexpected way, because it seemed that my late mother was there in spirit throughout the ceremony.

Martha Dobson Paulson died in 1985 at the age of 74. At that time Lindsey was only five years old, so she didn’t know much about her paternal grandmother. Last week, Lindsey was the first girl of Martha’s five grandchildren to be married.

Hummingbirds were always a special symbol of my mother. She had hummingbird feeders filled with red syrup hanging in her garden and rejoiced when they were used by the elusive visitors, which zipped around like tiny helicopters. Before she died, Martha chose the mausoleum in a San Pedro cemetery where her ashes and those of my father would be kept in brass boxes shaped like books. She selected their glass-fronted niche in the mausoleum because it had a view of a pond where ducks and swans swam.

When I went back to visit my parents’ graves some years ago, I attached some carved wooden hummingbirds to the window of the niche. I did the same to a framed photo I have in our hall of Martha posing with two of our children in 1976.

Last Saturday, as the wedding guests assembled at 6:30 for the outdoor ceremony, we admired the giant floral arrangements on each side of the altar and the pathway of white rose petals prepared for the wedding party.

We quickly realized that the place was alive with hummingbirds —dozens of them swooping toward the flowers, hovering stock still in the air, then darting away as we tried to photograph them.

The music began and my brother walked the bride down the rose petal path toward Mike, her waiting groom. The judge began to speak, leading them through their vows. Some of us were distracted from his words, watching the hummingbirds at play.

Near the end of the ceremony, a hummingbird flew directly in the face of my older daughter, Eleni, and then stopped, hanging in the air about a foot in front of her, motionless except for the blur of its wings. The bird and Eleni stared into each other’s eyes. I had never seen a hummingbird stay so still for so long —as if trying to communicate. Later I asked my daughter what the bird said and she replied with a smile, ”It said, ‘You look good!’”

After the ceremony, after the newlyweds were showered with yellow rose petals, there were cocktails and hors d’oeuvres in another garden as the sun set. The small tables held bowls in which floated white gardenias, yellow lemon slices and votive candles. I noted, but didn’t mention, that gardenias were my mother’s signature flower. When she was young, she liked to tuck a gardenia into her black hair.

We all moved through a hidden gate into a magical fairyland where we sat at tables for the toasts and the meal. The bride was lovely in her slender strapless lace gown with its long train pinned up for dancing.

I was astonished to learn that the couple had chosen for their first dance “Stardust”, a melody that was popular more than 40 years before they were born. I knew it well—it was my mother’s favorite song, sung by Hoagy Carmichael, and she played it on our old Victrola constantly when I was a child. But Lindsey and Mike had chosen it without knowing that.

The wedding of Martha’s first granddaughter to marry was, from beginning to end, a lovely, never-to-be-forgotten occasion. And I think my mother enjoyed it as much as any of the guests. Maybe more.