Wedding Pictures!

Hi everyone, sorry it's taken me so long to post some pictures from the wedding. We've been having major drama here. We got back from a lovely honeymoon in Santorini (an island here), to find that I couldn't get a visa to stay in Greece! We had a lawyer working on my papers, and all of the sudden she calls and says I can't get it. So, then we had 12 days to figure something out before my time was up. A tourist can only stay 3 months with just a passport. So, we decided to go to the Aliens Police office and go to the chief (we had a Greek friend with us to help). We go into a big office and some man takes both Oresti's and my passports. Then we wait in the hall for a while, then they called us back in and began speaking in a tone that didn't sound good. They were kind of yelling at Oresti and waving a piece of paper in his face. The paper was his visa to stay in Greece, but lately there's been a problem with it. Its a complicated mess, but Greece changed a law for construction workers, and he had to have a certain number of insured days of work, and he was under the amount so he's been illegal here now. That's why we couldn't leave the country. But he's applied for his green card again and its coming, but the police were telling him they could put him in jail right then. Thank the Lord they didn't, I don't know what I would've done. So, they told us then that I need to leave the country right away, and Oresti should go to Albania and try to get to the US from there. That was a very depressing day, we didn't know what to do and it was so sad to think all the planning we had done for our life in Greece was fizzling away. And we didn't know what was going to happen, if we were going to get separated and for how long? So, then in the evening I called the Greek Embassy in the US and they told me I could get a visa if I came back to the US and applied there. So, that sounded better to us than trying to move now to the US. So we started making plans for me to go, which was still sad because we would be separated for at least 3 weeks. And if I didn't get the visa, Oresti would have to move to the US, and if he moved before his green card came in, then he wouldn't be allowed to go back to Greece! So we were nervous about the whole situation. Then on this past monday we went with a man that Oresti's mom works for, to another important office, something like city hall. We went to the head of that office and the man we were with spoke for us, because he was friends with the chief of police (that's how Greece is, you have to know people to get anything). Anyway, the man in the office made some calls to check on the law and he said that there was no reason why I couldn't get a visa to stay. He said I didn't have to leave! So he made a call to the place where they give visas (where they told us we couldn't have one) and told them that we were coming over and to give me a visa! So, we did all the paperwork then and this morning I picked up my visa! Then when Oresti gets his green card in a few weeks
I'll also get a 2 year visa! Praise God!!













So, here's some pictures from the wedding. As you can see, we had a lot of fun! The ceremony was beautiful, it was half in Greek and half in English. And then there was a group from the church that got up and sang in Albanian and English. Everything went well, and we got to have the traditional kiss at the end:) Its not common to do that here, but everyone seemed to like it:) And then the couple and the parents stand outside the church at the end and everyone comes through and greets the couple and parents. My parents have never been kissed so much in their lives! And in Albania they give 4 kisses to family members, haha:) We had a good time though, and then we had more pictures in the church before leaving for the reception. Then we waited a bit so to give everyone time to get to the reception place. The band was already going when we got there and they played a fun fast song for our entrance and everyone was on their feet clapping, it was so fun! We went right to the cake and cut it and drank champagne, then had our first dance to "You say it best when you say nothing at all" kind of a country sounding song from the movie Notting Hill. It was nice and then my dad and I danced a slow song. Then the party got started:) We had 3 different bands there, but the Albanian band played the most. Oresti's cousins have a band also and they were there and played some rock stuff (they're really good!) and there was also a Greek band from the restaurant that played some Greek songs, but mostly we had Albanian music. And the couple is expected to dance everydance because the tables have to take turns dancing and they want to dance with the couple, so we were on our feet most of the night, but we had a blast. Sometimes Oresti and I would start dancing alone in the middle of the ring dancing and everyone would stop and cheer for us and clap and throw money at us:) At one point someone started Oresti's hankerchief on fire to symbolize the burning of his bachelor life:) He had to wave the burning cloth around while we danced and then they lifted us both up on shoulders and threw us up in the air!
Then around 2:30am we decided to change into regular clothes, as you can see in the pictures, and we put on our cowboy hats and came out dancing to Sweet Home Alabama:) The crowd had no idea we were going to do that and everyone was cheering and whistling! Oh, I wish you all could have been there to enjoy the wedding, we had so much fun!
Well, we are going to put together a video of it, we got lots of footage from different people, so hopefully you all can see it sometime.
When I get honeymoon pictures I'll post those. I didn't take digital there, so I have to scan the pictures. OK, hope you all are well!