Lucy Williams Got Married in an Olive Grove on a Greek Island
I found the first month or so of being engaged a really stressful time. Everyone is dying to know where, how and when you’re going to get married and I had no clue. I’d definitely thought about what I didn’t want my wedding to be like, I just hadn’t thought as far as what I did want it to be like. Thankfully, we had a two-week trip to the Greek island of Andros planned where we could step away from the questions and external pressure (“You need to book bands and photographers at least a year in advance, just FYI”), for some blissed-out solitude and copious amounts of feta.
During those two weeks, we fell head over heels for the island. I’ve long been in love with Greece, but Andros felt extra special. Its low-key charm, unpretentious beach clubs (not a white daybed in sight), amazing hospitality and azure coves had us under its spell. While sipping home-grown wine at the small guesthouse we were staying at outside of Chora, I innocently asked the owner Nelly if she’d ever had a wedding there. “No… but I know exactly how we could do it,” she replied with a twinkle in her eye.
And so it came to pass: a year later almost to the day, Ruaraidh and I celebrated our wedding in Andros, introducing just over 100 of our friends and family to one of our favorite places. My family never did Mediterranean holidays growing up (my dad’s a farmer, so summers were spent in Wales), and I loved the idea of all our family being on a Greek island in the run up to the big day. In fact, a lot of our guests turned it into a longer trip, spending time in Athens or on other islands before or after the wedding. It meant our families and friends had got to know each other by the time the big day arrived. There’s nothing better than two friends who have never met before raving about each other. One of my favorite parts of the whole week was randomly bumping into friends getting coffee or having an ice cream in the small town, which was surreal and very special.
I always thought I’d design a custom dress for my wedding, but I was in the midst of designing and renovating an entire house when we got engaged. I had zero creative energy left. Thankfully I found one I loved by Danielle Frankel on a trip to New York visiting a friend. A lot of people told me they could totally imagine what I’d wear and it would be a slip dress of some kind (admittedly I do love a slip on a summer holiday), but I actually found myself wanting something a little more structured with sleeves for the ceremony. I loved the layer of tulle over the entire dress and simplicity of the whole thing—it felt Grecian without looking too “themed.”
I think when you work in fashion, there can be a lot of well-meaning pressure when it comes to what you’re going to wear to your wedding, so maybe subconsciously going super simple and minimal felt like my safety blanket from all of that. I loved all the different elements, but didn’t quite think through the pointy shoes with the tulle on the dress and literally almost tripped over when walking down the aisle, which definitely broke the ice and my faux-elegant facade!
We had the ceremony in the garden of an old mansion house in Chora with views out to sea, and lined the aisle with gaura—one of my favorite parts of the whole thing. I’ve always loved daisies and chamomile. I carried a simple bunch of chamomile and filled the flower girls’ baskets with the same. We’d already officially gotten married in London a few weeks earlier, so we asked our good friend Will to do the ceremony. After the ceremony, we had drinks on the lawn (and a small champagne tower thanks to the crazy wind that made anything above 20 cm pretty perilous), before leaving for the reception in an old open-back Land Rover decorated by my school friends with olive branches and tin cans.