Alexandroupoli sits at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, the commercial centre of Thrace and the easternmost city on the Greek mainland coast. The lighthouse, built by the French in the 19th century, marks the entrance to the bay and is one of the few supervised lighthouses still operating in Greece. Neoclassical buildings line the squares around St Nicolas Cathedral, and the old fishing quarter still carries traces of the city's history as a stop on the Orient Express line between Thessaloniki and Istanbul.

Niki and Christodoulos married in their shared homeland.

The ceremony was held at the chapel of Agios Evplos, set on the rocks above the sea just by the port of the city. The reception that followed was on a different scale entirely. A custom venue was built at the port, next to the church, to host over a thousand guests, every element of it designed for the occasion. Few weddings in Greece operate at this size, and the logistics of the evening matched the ambition of it.

The port itself gave the day its closing image. The light over Alexandroupoli turns a deep red at sunset, and that evening the sky moved through dramatic cloud as the celebration continued below it.

A wedding for a thousand guests requires a different kind of preparation than an intimate ceremony. We scouted the port and the tent structure in advance, understanding sightlines, lighting and the practical logistics of moving through a reception of that scale without losing the couple in it.

Before arriving we had learned enough about Niki and Christodoulos to understand what this day meant to their families and their city. A wedding this size in a homeland this specific carries weight beyond the couple themselves, and the photography needed to register both things at once.

The lighthouse and the port at sunset gave us the closing sequence of the day, with the city itself as the backdrop to everything that had happened.

For our work across the Greece visit our dedicated page  Wedding photography in Greece