Skiathos is a small green island in the northern Aegean where the pine forest runs down to the sand. The hills behind the town rise to about four hundred metres and are covered in trees, the coast has more than sixty beaches, and the most famous of them, Koukounaries, is a kilometre of fine sand backed by a pine grove and a lagoon protected as a nature reserve. The airport sits between the town and the sea, close enough that the runway is a landmark, and in summer it takes direct flights from more than thirty European cities.
We suggest Skiathos when the guest list is young, the plan is a long weekend, and the couple wants the island to do the entertaining. Its beaches, its boats and its nightlife look after the days either side of the wedding, and the pines give the wedding itself a shade and a scent that the bare islands of the Cyclades cannot.
The island does the entertaining
On Skiathos the days around the wedding plan themselves. A bus runs the length of the south coast every twenty minutes in summer, stopping at twenty six beaches on the way to Koukounaries, so guests can pick a different bay each morning without hiring anything. Boats leave the old harbour for Lalaria, a crescent of white pebbles under a pale cliff with a natural rock arch at one end, which can only be reached from the water. Skopelos is half an hour away by ferry for a day on the next island. And the town has a nightlife that surprises people who expected a quiet place, so the after-party has somewhere to go when the wedding closes. In August the pine forest keeps the heat gentler than on the treeless islands, and the Sporades breeze does the rest.
Where to get married on Skiathos
The town wraps around two harbours with the Bourtzi between them, a small pine-covered peninsula with the ruins of a Venetian fort, and the old quarter climbs above the waterfront with its narrow streets and the house of Alexandros Papadiamantis, the island’s novelist. Along the south coast between the town and Koukounaries, the hotels and villas sit above a string of bays, with Achladies and Kanapitsa in the middle and Troulos further west. Koukounaries itself has the pine grove behind the beach, and Agia Eleni, on the western tip, faces the sunset. The north coast is wild, with the abandoned medieval town of Kastro on its rock and Lalaria below, and it is where the day before the wedding belongs.
Getting to Skiathos
The island has its own airport, ten minutes from the town. Flights from Athens take forty five minutes and run all year, and from May to October there are direct flights from Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, Italy and a dozen other places, with the shoulder months adding seats every year. Guests who prefer the sea come through Volos, where the fast boats reach the island in an hour and a half and the conventional ferries in about two and a half, with up to four sailings a day in summer, or through Agios Konstantinos, the port closest to Athens, in about two and a half hours through the summer months. Skopelos and Alonissos are half an hour and two hours away for anyone extending the trip.
The best time to get married on Skiathos
June, the first half of July and September are the months we would choose first. The sea is warm by June, the rain has stopped, and the island is open without being full. May is green and quiet, with the sea still cold and some hotels only just opening, and early June can bring a cool evening that a wrap solves. July and August are hot and busy, with Koukounaries filling by mid-morning, though the pines and the breeze make the heat easier here than on most islands. October brings the first rain and the start of the closing season. Summer showers do come across from the mainland now and then, so every outdoor ceremony we plan on Skiathos has a covered alternative confirmed in advance.
The island Papadiamantis wrote about
Skiathos has a literary claim that no other Greek island of its size can make. Alexandros Papadiamantis, whose stories are the beginning of modern Greek prose, was born and died in the town, and the main street carries his name. The monastery of Evangelistria, in the hills above, is where the first Greek flag was woven and blessed in 1807, fourteen years before the revolution. The island’s own pastry is a spiral cheese pie that the delis on Papadiamantis Street sell by the piece, and it belongs on a wedding table here as much as anything grander. Those are the threads a Skiathos wedding can pick up, a ceremony in the pines, a table that ends with the island’s pie, and a weekend that the guests spend on the water.
