Spetses is the most polished of the islands within reach of Athens.
The captains who built its fleet in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries built mansions with the money, a tobacco baron added a grand hotel modelled on the Negresco in Nice in 1914, and the town has been welcoming Athenians and Europeans in linen ever since.
There are no cars in the town. Guests arrive by boat, move by horse-drawn carriage, bicycle or water taxi, and the last sound of the night is the sea against the harbour wall.
Why Spetses suits a wedding weekend
The scale is the first gift. Spetses is small enough that a wedding weekend can happen on foot and by boat, with guests staying in the town, walking to the ceremony along the pebble mosaics of Dapia, riding to the reception in a carriage, and taking a water taxi to a beach the next morning.
The second is the look of the place. Neoclassical mansions, an old harbour where wooden boats are still built, and the Poseidonion at the end of the seafront give a wedding a backdrop of built elegance that most islands cannot offer.
The third is the sea. Boats are how Spetses moves, and a wedding here can use them for the arrivals, for the day after, and for a sunset watched from the water rather than the shore.
Where to get married on Spetses
The town wraps around two harbours. Dapia, where the boats come in, has the main square with Bouboulina’s statue, the cafés and the Poseidonion Grand Hotel. The Old Harbour further along the coast is quieter, with the yards where the wooden boats are built and the chapel of Panagia Armata at the end of the walk. Between the two run the mansions of the old shipping families, some of them now hotels.
Beyond the town the island is pine forest down to the sea, with beaches at Agia Marina, Agioi Anargyroi and Agia Paraskevi reached by carriage, bicycle or boat.
Getting to Spetses, two hours from Athens
Spetses has no airport, which is part of the point. From Athens there are two routes. The high-speed boats from Piraeus take about two hours, closer to three when they call at Poros and Hydra on the way, and they run all year with more sailings in summer.
Or you drive down through the Peloponnese to Kosta, about two and a half hours from the airport, leave the car at the port and cross by ferry in fifteen minutes or by water taxi in five. Guests who like the sea take the boat from Piraeus, and guests who prefer a car drive. Nobody brings the car across, because private cars are banned from the town. We arrange the crossings and we tell your guests which route suits them before they book.
The best time to get married on Spetses
The season runs from April to October, and outside it most of the island’s shops and restaurants close. May and June are warm with the town still quiet, September is warm with a sea that has had all summer to heat up, and July and August are hot and full.
The second weekend of September is the Armata, when the island re-enacts the naval battle of 1822 with a burning ship and fireworks in the harbour and every hotel is booked. A wedding that weekend has the biggest show in the Saronic as its backdrop, and a wedding the weekend after has the island almost to itself.
The Spetsiot part of a wedding here
Spetses celebrates from its boats. The biggest night of the year is the Armata, when a wooden ship built for the purpose burns in the harbour and fireworks go up over the water, and the most elegant is the classic yacht regatta in June, when the old sailing boats line the seafront. A wedding here can take the same view. Guests cross from the mainland by boat, the sunset is watched from a caique, and the day after is spent on the water reaching beaches the road never touches.
The table follows the same line. The island’s baked fish, its pine honey and its almond sweets, which double as favours, are what a Spetsiot wedding serves, and the island supplies all of it.
