Your bilingual wedding ceremony in Crete
An increase in bilingual weddings
As a wedding celebrant, I meet with people from around the world and I have definitely seen an increase in the requests for a bilingual wedding ceremony.
Most of the bilingual ceremonies that I’ve done so far are for couples who are looking for a way to include everyone in their wedding ceremony. They themselves are often bilingual too but realize that not every one of their guests will be. It’s a wonderful way to allow everyone to be present in their wedding ceremony
I still remember my first bilingual wedding ceremony. The groom was a captain on a luxury yacht and the bride was one of the crew members. Two languages came together on this yacht; English from New Zealand and Polish.
For reason that many of the guests couldn’t understand either language, we quickly decided to bring in a Polish translator.
Luckily one of the Polish family members was fluent in English. Long before the wedding date, I teamed up with this lady and shared my ceremony documents. We met before the wedding and did a rehearsal. Like clockwork!!
Both the families from New Zealand and Poland were able to follow the ceremony in detail.
Bring in a second language into your wedding ceremony!
At another wedding, I brought in a wedding planner how could do the vocal translation into the Greek language. We had a party that was equally divided into two languages. We did a rehearsal just to make sure we’d synchronize during the ceremony. At another wedding, I decided with the wedding couple that we would hand over a printed copy of the wedding ceremony to the few guests that were not able to follow the ceremony in the Dutch language.
It’s all about meeting customer expectations. Sometimes the customers are unaware of the bilingual possibilities and it’s up to the wedding celebrant to point them out.
Save costs in your translation
If you’ve decided to hold a bilingual wedding ceremony then have this mentioned in the invitation, or use a wedding website and use both languages in the text if you can. This allows your guests to be prepared for a somewhat special occasion and a ceremony they’ll understand and feel a part of. It’ll also be a bit longer ceremony – depending on how much is translated, it could last up to an hour or more – and your guests may want to be prepared for that. You can read more about the ceremony duration in my blog article “How long should a wedding ceremony be?“
There are multiple ways to have two languages in your wedding ceremony, but a vocal translation is far out the favourite one. To save costs you can ask a family member, or a close friend to do the translation. I can communicate well before the wedding with this assigned translator. I share my ceremony with this person up to the last moment.
Another possibility is; have the whole ceremony being translated into a second language by yourself. I use this scenario when we only have view members of the wedding party that need translation assistance. Just before the wedding ceremony, we hand out the translated documents. If I need to do the document translation locally in Crete there will be extra costs involved.
So, bringing in family or friends and/or do some own translation can save you costs.
And yes we do exist! The bilingual celebrants!
My native language is Dutch, but professionally I have spoken English for much longer in the aviation industry.
I love the flexibility and choice I can offer couples as their Bilingual Celebrant! My couples are delighted they are able to have as much or as little of the language as they feel is needed.
Sometimes I translate everything and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I will only translate the traditional elements like the I Do, the Ring Exchange and the Vows. It’s all about the couple’s wishes.
My focus is to ensure the ceremony is exactly how the wedding couple dreamed it would be.