Greece, Santorini or Mykonos wedding photographer

Are you searching for an english speaking destination wedding
photographer to meet you in Santorini, Athens, Mykonos or other parts of Greece?

Wedding photographer Glen Johnson travels regularly for weddings in Greece, Santorini, Mykonos
and the surrounding islands.

 

 

I've had the pleasure of visiting Greece three different times now to shoot the weddings in the town of Oia (pronouned Eea) on Santorini island. Greece is truly a beautiful country with lots unspoiled coastline dotted with quaint little fishing villages, and beautuful mountains as well. The mountain villages are my favorite. I've never seen a people that lived so simply and in so much natural beauty. Seeing it makes me sad to think of what we "modern" people have traded for our technological lifestyle.

I love getting to the island of Santorini by taking the overnight ferry from Athens. You arrive on Santorini at about 8am, and after a short wait, you catch the shuttle bus to Fira, and then on to Oia. Oia is the classic Santorini town that you see in pictures and postcards of the area. White and blue are pretty much the only colors which must make it very easy to keep paint stocked at the local hardware store. The buildings are constructed almost entirely with rock and cement and almost all of them have the classic domed roof with a coating of bright white paint. The walkways are paved with Marble as are many streets and walkways throughout Greece. The main part of town is very touristy but contrary to most tourist areas, there is actually a wide variety of materials for sale in the shops. By far the highest concentration is on local jewelry products, many of them are replicas of ancient greek artifacts. If you're in the market for a gold piece that will really stand out when you wear it in the states, Greece is a great place to find such a treasure. However, the prices are not what you would call cheap by any standards. In fact, I would say that in general, nothing in Greece is cheap except the food you find at local (non tourist) food markets. The conversion to Euros makes everything more expensive for Americans.

If you want to plan a wedding for this area I can reccomend Sunset villas (in Oia) for your guests, as well as several small places that rent rooms in Finikia which is just a 10 minute walk away from the cliffs of Oia. The cliffside dwellings all rent for various amounts from about $100 Euros per night and up. In Finikia, you can find very comfortable and extremely cute little places for about 40-50 Euros per night.

 

2006   samples of Santorini wedding photography.  
2007   more Santorini wedding photography.  

2007 slideshow  slideshow from our wanderings around Greece and Santorini

 

Santorini Resources

 Sea Captain's House

www.santorini-secrets.com

I do have a suggestion for a hotel in Santorini that will save you some serious money. It's not the fanciest of places but it is right in the heart of things. I've stayed there every time I've ever been to Santorini and I wouldn't consider any other place. It's called Oia Sunset and the manager is a very friendly guy named Panos. The location is perfect. As you pull into the central courtyard in Oia where the busses unload, the hotel is just about 40 yards up the hill. It does not have the cliffside view. The rooms are very nice and simple and as you will see in the photos, each room has a fairly private deck. One room seems to have a rooftop deck that would overlook the caldera side of town so you might make an early request for that room. Walking to the cliffside area is about 2 minutes and Panos is happy to tell you all about the good places to go and what to see. I highly reccomend this place if you want to save some cash. Seems like I've paid roughly 75 euros per night in the fall. I think most of the caldera view places charge 200 euros and more per night.

Finikia is another often overlooked place to stay. I personally find it extremely charming since it is where all the locals live and it still retains much more of the "real" Greece feeling as compared to the very "touristy" places along the cliffside. This is where I go to find most of the locations in the photos on my slideshows.


You can get hair and makeup done by Peter at Hair and Soul Salon...

Most people have the wedding night dinner at a wonderful restaurant called Ambrosia which I highly reccomend...

If you talk to Peter or Panos, please tell them Glen says Hello!

Good luck with the planning and I hope some of this helps.

 

The following are emails I received from some of
my Santorini wedding couples.

 

Dear Glen,

Roger and I want to sincerely thank you for the lovely photos you took for our wedding. The pictures came out beautifully, and our family and friends tease us that we look like we are in a brochure for Santorini. It was wonderful to spend the day with you roaming from Oia to Finikia, and capturing moments which we will cherish forever. And we love that the photos did not come across staged, that you were so open to our ideas, and that you gave us a very fair price. Actually, looking at the quality of the finished photos, we think it might have been a steal! So many of the pictures came out well, that it was really difficult to narrow them down for the slide show we showed to our family and friends.

Quite serendipitously, everything came together perfectly, far better than we could have imagined. The day before, we arranged for the cake and flowers, and found the balcony location for the ceremony. I bought my dresses (from Naeem Khan and Vera Wang) at sample sales—the first dresses I saw, probably about a month before, and Roger bought his duds at discount stores a week before our flight. So, our wedding photography was what we splurged on, but we felt it was well worth it to preserve our beautiful memories.

After being together for 14 years and attending several weddings, we wanted our wedding to be a little bit different, a private ceremony in which we professed our promises of love. It was very un-formulaic, but romantic, with just the two of us. It made for lots of laughs and tears. So, thank you so much for being our only witnesses to our vows (and, thank you, Amelie, for reminding Roger that the ring goes on his left hand, not his right!). While our family and friends weren’t there, we feel that, through your pictures, we were able to bring our wedding to them --- the emotions and love from our ceremony, as well as the breathtaking beauty of Santorini.

It was great working with both of you. Hopefully we will get published in Cosmo Bride Australia!

Have a happy holiday and a wonderful new year!

Best wishes,

Lisa Toledo and Roger Lee

---

From : Toy, Wendy
Sent : Thursday, June 15, 2006

Dear Glen,

I just wanted to thank you again for coming out to Greece to take our wedding pictures.

I was a little afraid to book a photographer on-line without meeting them and was afraid since the wedding was all the way in Greece but the minute I saw your website and your pictures, I had no doubt in my mind that I wanted you to take our wedding pictures.

The pictures that you have posted on your website are already beautiful but when I saw ours, I was really blown away and realized just how lucky we were that we were able to book you with your busy schedule. You really did an amazing job of capturing us and capturing the true beauty of Santorini!

What we really liked the most about you, is that you took the time to research different areas to find the places that you thought would be a good and creative place to take our pictures. We also loved that you were so easy and great to work with you. You made us feel at ease and therefore, we were able to relax, have fun and be ourselves, which is reflected in our pictures.

The dedication that you put in your work and with your clients is evident in the quality of your pictures. We will always cherish our time and memories in Greece and thanks to you, all we have to do is look at our pictures and it's like we're there all over again. I can't say enough about how great our pictures turned out and neither can all of the people that I have sent our pictures to. I hope that everyone who comes across your website will be smart enough to book you as fast as they can....they will be very thankful they did because we are!

Thanks for everything Glen and thanks for capturing this very special time in our lives in such a professional, creative and amazing way.

Sincerely,
Wendy and Michael

By the way, here are a few of the emails responses from people I have sent the pictures to:

From: Roberson, Dayna
We are all wowed over here. GORGEOUS...your hubby cleans up good! these are vogue magazine quality photos.

From: Sawall, Judy
Oh my God! These photos are absolutely gorgeous. Did you take the photographer with you to Greece? He did a wonderful job on your wedding pictures. Judy

From: Gehlen, Mary
Wendy, WOW. I have never seen wedding photos like these before, except maybe in a magazine.
Most impressive to say the least. Thanks for sharing them! - Mary