Not a soul back home had a clue about us getting married, so we were very excited to find out how people had reacted. Not that we feared any angry reactions, but still... I couldn't resist turning the phone on for a while to see if anything had happened. It had. My father had sent us an SMS back saying "CONGRATULATIONS FROM STIGO" 
Nothing from my mother or sister. Not that night, or the following morning, so I kind of had my suspicions something was going on. I know them too well... :o)

First of all, we had to get back to Mykonos. Two boats a day left Piraeus, heading for Mykonos. The first at 7:45 a.m. and the next at 8:15 a.m. So we didn't have much of a choice... No matter how little we slept that night, we still had to get up by 6, clean the apartment and leave. It was still pretty dark when we stood outside the church, waiting for the bus to come take us to the port. 
Express Aphrodite took us back "home". A lovely 6 hour trip in beaming sunshine and short stops at the islands of Syros and Tinos, that made us realize how much prettier Mykonos was, with it's extraordinary architecture. 
Safely back on Mykonos, we took the bus to Ornos, to check in at our new hotel; Anixi. The girl at the desk was so kind and smiling; welcomed us, and told us to hold on a second while she had to go take care of something... Now I definitely knew something was going on!
Soon she was back and escorted us to our apartment. She opened the door, and on a table in our bedroom was a huge bouquet of red roses and a bottle of champagne. And a card... of course from my mother and Laura! I started crying, and then Pierre and I opened the champagne to enjoy it while it still was cold. It was about 4 in the afternoon, and I had only eaten a nectarine and had a glass of juice that day, so the champagne got to me at once! We lay down on the bed, sipping champagne and again enjoying everything. I remember saying to Pierre that if this was married life -having champagne every single day- it was even better than I had expected! ;o)
I was getting more and more giggly for every glass I had, and by the time we had to go to the grocery store to fill our fridge, I was more or less laughing out loud over nothing! It was such a great feeling; to be able to do whatever you want, even have champagne in the middle of the afternoon, and on top of all be married! And that bottle of champagne was the beginning of our honeymoon...

We received a couple more SMS messages, and that night, Tuesday night, our phone rang. I answered, and heard nothing but silence. When I said "hello?" I heard a quiet sob, and then a trembling "-Julia?"
That was my mom calling... She cried for a minute or so, before we could actually start talking. She was so happy for us, and so surprised and shocked and god knows what. We had a really long talk, and she told me Laura had come in with her cellular phone and a funny look on her face the night before (our wedding day).  After reading the message, they were so surprised and happy. They had laughed, cried, gasped...
She (my mother) had gone out to the balcony for a while, and saw a shooting star. Quickly she whispered "congratulations". And shortly after that she saw Northern Lights in the sky. Those are very unusual in those areas of our country, and are usually only seen in the northern parts of Sweden, and she thought of that as a good omen for Pierre and I. (Isn't that so sweet?!?)
She also told me they had a lot of questions, when, where, how? etc. Everything had been so chaotic and emotional! Later on she had found the URL we had written in the message, and she and Laura went to see our wedding web site for the first time. A lot of their questions were answered that way, and when she saw the picture of Eeyore modeling my home-made veil, she started crying again. She knows I hate sewing!
We talked for ages, and then I talked with Laura for a long time as well, so I'm glad we had some money collected on our cellular phone account, to be used. The women of our family are such emotional creatures!

We had a great last week at Mykonos, (more information about our entire trip will be published in another section later on...) enjoying life under the sun, but finally our stay came to an end, and we had to travel back to Sweden, to reality...

Being a newly-wed

Pierre and I have been together for so long, and to be totally honest; the sparkliest passion had turned into a deep, safe wonderful love for each other ages ago. Getting married is really a blast, and also affects your feelings towards the other. We were so cuddly and clingy, couldn't stop touching each other and had these huge happy grins all over our faces, all the time. I remember the first mornings at Anixi, after we had come home from Athens. I would wake up and look at this handsome, sleeping man lying next to me; so beautiful with the tan he had gained from the Greek sun, in sharp contrast to the white sheets embracing him, and thinking "this is my husband". I stretched out to reach him, the golden rings on my tanned finger, the diamonds sparkling... I was so happy!

Coming home

We apparently had stirred up many people's feelings back at home. Pierre's mother found out about it at work, and just cracked. Several of my friends who had looked at our webpages told us they had a lump in their throats, and we got soooo much attention, greetings, congratulations, mails and warm thoughts, even from people pretty distant to us, when we got home, it was truly overwhelming! 

When we arrived at our apartment on September 1, it was in a true mess! The front porch was covered with all kinds of stuff, and all the furniture inside was wrapped in toilet paper, all the flowers and posters/paintings on our walls had been re-arranged and the bathtub was full of balloons! That was Pierre's mum and sister's way of welcoming us home.... :o)

So many people have shown us their affection, and we were really overwhelmed by everything!
It felt so great to be able to thank them all by arranging this reception/party we had been planning on.
So as soon as we got home, I started the planning, but that is a whole other story... 
 
 

I am so proud to be his wife, so proud to be married, and have almost  gotten used to writing my new name. I was a bit giggly at first, when I referred to him as "my husband", but even that has improved since then. Pierre used to call me his "girlfriend" by accident at times, which kind of annoyed me, but he's learned to be much better at that, and I get this incredibly proud feeling whenever I hear him refer to me as his WIFE in public... Still can't believe it's true...!