Elmo! Yay!

So! The Non-Anne-Boleyn iteration of Elmo has arrived in the nick of time! Phew!

At 6pm on Saturday in the church of “the Virgin Mary behind the bike sheds” we are invited to the wedding of our accountant, the very gorgeous Maria, and her lovely chap, Ioannis, who ran the roadhouse this Summer. 

It has always been the tradition at Greek weddings to pin large denomination currency notes to the bride's gown, as well as auctioning off slices of the Groom's tie for cash, but ever since capital controls were introduced here in the summer of 2015, cash has become a painfully embarrassing social issue. The Greeks, being the Greeks, have devised a new socially acceptable normal, which is to include an IBAN at the bottom of a wedding invitation. It makes the Brits squirm because we would all rather get something anonymously from the list at John Lewis than let the recipients know precisely how much we spent on them. But this is the way things are in 21st Century Greece.

At 6pm on Sunday at the same venue we are invited to the baptism of the daughter of the will-be-by-then newly-wed Maria & Ioannis. The nameless baby will be only six months old, so a good year younger than most baptisms, and I explained the race to get her a gift here.

Elmo is a gift destined for the brand-new baby of these vets, and at the time of writing I do not know if s/he has yet arrived safely. We certainly do not expect to be invited to a baptism in their case, but we wanted to welcome their new baby into this uncertain world because these parents have done so much to improve the life-quality of some of our favourite animals.

Finding unique cards and gifts on a tiny island is a challenge and so I have done what I can to keep a step ahead, gifts have been sourced from far away and cards are home-made. Each card has a different photograph of dawn, an envelope plastered with 'with love with love with love' and a card which reads; “Welcome to the world! We hope you like it here, we have tried to keep it safe and beautiful for you”
I got some help with the Greek :-)

Really, I must get into the habit of putting workable tags onto my blips so I don't have to keep adding links!