The Greek Orthodox wedding service

Said koom-BAH-ros

The sponsor is a named participant, not an usher with a title. The koumbaros pays for the stefana, exchanges the rings over the couple’s hands three times during the Betrothal, and exchanges the crowns over their heads three times during the Crowning. The relationship created is understood to be permanent and quasi-familial: in very many families the koumbaros goes on to be the godparent of the couple’s first child, and the word for that relationship, koumbaria, is used of the families as a whole rather than of two individuals. Choosing one is therefore a heavier decision than choosing a best man, and Greek families treat it that way. The sponsor must be an Orthodox Christian in good standing with a parish, which occasionally surprises couples who had someone else in mind.

Greek crowns are light. They are slender wreaths — silver or gold plate, silk flowers, sometimes real leaves or pearls — and they are tied to each other by a single white ribbon so that they physically cannot be separated. That joining is the whole point of the design, and it is why the crowns can be lifted and passed across so easily. Afterwards the couple keep them: they are usually placed in a stefanothiki, a glass-fronted case, and hung in the house, and a good many Greek households still have a grandmother’s stefana on the wall. By tradition they are kept for life and buried with the couple, which is not something anyone will insist on but is worth knowing before a well-meaning relative asks what you have done with them.

Practice varies enormously from parish to parish and this is the first thing to ask about. Some Archdiocesan parishes celebrate almost entirely in English with a few petitions and hymns in Greek; others keep long passages of Greek for a congregation that prefers it. Most will print a parallel text so guests can follow either way. The Ephesians reading and the Gospel are commonly read in both languages, one after the other, which adds a few minutes and is usually the most requested accommodation for a mixed congregation.

Greek parishes keep the Revised Julian calendar, so the Nativity falls on the twenty-fifth of December and every fixed feast lands on the civil date you would expect. Pascha is still calculated on the older reckoning, which is why Orthodox Easter sometimes coincides with the Western one and sometimes falls up to five weeks later. For a wedding this matters in one practical way: Great Lent and Holy Week are the longest closed period in the year and they move, so the spring dates available to you are different every year and cannot be worked out from last year’s calendar.