This Fashion Designer Bride’s Wedding Dress Took 3,500 Hours to Craft for Her Ceremony in Greece
It took a literal push for Buggy Valhouli and Mattias Grandury to actually meet. At a birthday party in New York City, the pair were seated at the same table. However, a floral arrangement obstructed their view of one another. “I didn’t notice him until we both ended up on the dance floor!” Buggy remembers. “Mattias was dancing next to me for quite a while trying to get my attention, but I was completely unaware until my best friend Abby physically turned me around to face him. I thought he was so handsome, so charming, and an unbelievable dancer. We had the best time together that night.” Before leaving, the birthday girl pulled Buggy aside to whisper, “Mattias is the best guy I know—the absolute best.” Buggy adds, “To this day, I couldn’t agree more.”
Almost three years later, Buggy and her family decided to go on a trip to Greece when her mother received clearance to travel while battling stage-four cancer. “Her one request—to ‘dance on tables in Mykonos’—was granted,” says Buggy. Even though the flight was just two weeks away, Mattias decided the family trip was the perfect time to propose and flew to Boston to ask Buggy s parents permission for her hand in marriage. On the morning of the proposal, Mattias let her family in on the plan to get down on one knee at Agios Sostis church, which sits above a beach and restaurant the Valhoulis loved. “After putting our names down at Kiki’s, he suggested we run over to the church to admire the views before eating. When we arrived, he dropped to one knee—and before he could even say anything, suddenly my whole family appeared from every corner, my aunt blasting my favorite Nikos Vertis song,” says Buggy. “It truly felt like My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” The celebrations went on throughout the day and continued on their journey to Paros, where they shared the news with more family and friends over dinner at their favorite restaurant, Siparos.
Since Buggy had spent years visiting Paros with her family, it was the perfect location to host their wedding celebration. “It felt especially meaningful to bring together Mattias’s French family, my Greek family, and our friends from all over the world on an island so dear to us,” says the bride. “The weekend unfolded over several days of celebration, and by the end there wasn’t a table we hadn’t danced on or a song we hadn’t sung—we were all in full party mode.” The festivities would begin with an intimate seaside dinner at Siparos on Thursday night, followed the next day with a welcome dinner at Barbarossa, a harbor-front restaurant in Naoussa. “The main celebration took place at Agios Ioannis Detis, a Greek Orthodox monastery perched dramatically on the rocks above the bay, with the reception at Monastiri Beach Club just below the church,” says Buggy. “Guests arrived at the church by traditional bougainvillea-adorned kaïki—local fishermen boats—accompanied by a local Cycladic band that played traditional Greek wedding music.”
With the help of planner La Fête, the couple crafted a wedding weekend inspired by the poem “Ithaka” by C.P. Cavafy. “It speaks to the beauty of the journey—a message that shaped every detail of our wedding,” explains Buggy. “The wedding was designed to feel like a journey through places, textures, and traditions that shaped us—a celebration not just of love, but of life’s path itself.” These themes were woven in with the food, music, décor, and fashion. “Through it all, we tried to honor Greece’s effortless, elegant simplicity. In the end, it wasn’t about creating something perfect, but about a wedding that felt full of organic joy, love, and true to us.”
As a designer, Buggy decided to take advantage of this design opportunity to “indulge in pure fantasy without restrictions,” she says. The bride would create four bridal looks for herself, as well as her mother’s dress and the table linens for the weekend. “Each piece tells a story: honoring the location, paying homage to craftsmanship, and weaving together cultural influences,” explains the designer. “My bridal looks integrated exquisite Indian hand-beaded techniques, developed closely with our Mumbai atelier and couture beading houses, yet remained infused with a distinctly Greek spirit.”
For the first event at Siparos, Buggy created an open-back halter gown in silk chiffon covered in chikankari hand-embroidery of florals and olive branches. “Though the dress felt simple, 380 hours of delicate chikankari handwork went into its making,” she shares. “I paired it with a sparkling choker discovered in India and soft, salt-swept hair from a swim just before dinner.”
Night two’s welcome party would feature a hand-beaded gown inspired by the port of Naoussa, “a whitewashed fishing village alive with electric energy that set the stage for the evening’s dinner,” the bride says. “I combined crochet pompoms and lace cutouts reminiscent of fishing nets, sequined jellyfish drifting across the silk, and hand-dyed crystals in rose, cerulean, and soft blue forming Byzantine cross motifs, a nod to the chapel just steps from where Mattias and I were seated. The lace appliqué shapes were inspired by patterns of a vintage Greek textile at the Benaki Museum in Athens—my favorite museum in the world.” To add some sexiness to the gown, the designer decided to cut out half of the lining when she did her fitting for the dress in India. “I loved how young and playful it made the dress feel,” she adds.
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