Tourism cancellations hurting Greeks

Here is an article I read today about the impact of the current economic and political climate in Greece on tourism. Some of the things in this article are pretty scary - and realistically, I know that the chances things will clear up in the next 6 months are very low. I also can't help but think how SELFISH of me it is to be reading all of this and thinking, "Oh fuck - now where am I gonna get married?"

FULL ARTICLE HERE

Reservations are down by an average of about 30 percent nationwide since last summer, and experts expect a large number of cancellations. The Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises (SETE) reported that in the first 24 hours after the general strike in early May, more than 5,800 reservations were canceled in 28 Athens hotels. According to SETE calculations, at least 300,000 Germans will decide not to make their usual trips to Greece this year.

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Airfare and Unrest

A few weeks ago my dad brought to my attention the fact that he felt nervous about going over to Greece for the wedding with all of the political unrest over there. (In his words: "You better come up with a backup plan, the country of Greece might not even exist next month!). After waiting it out a little and coming up with a (sort of) backup plan... things seem to be safe enough, and I feel confident that we'll be safe and Greece should still exist by January.

My first task to (re) start my planning was to check on airfare. The plan is to leave about three days before the wedding day and stay about a week afterward to tour. My parents will be paying for my and my fiance's tickets as well as their own and half of my brother's (and his girlfriend's) - altogether, it'll end up being 5 plane tickets that I must fit into my budget. I almost shat my little bridal bloomers when I saw that the $600/per ticket price tag I was expecting was far from reality. In 2008, when BG and I visited- we paid $1,200 total for the two of us (we spent $2,600 overall after two weeks including airfare, hotel, food, booze, tours etc.) As of this morning - tickets are running about $1,100 EACH. OUCH. That means I'll need to set aside over $5k for TRAVEL? That is (exactly) half my budget!

So... what to do? Well, after doing some research, emailing some experts (and by experts I mean travel bloggers that write survival guides for Athens and destination wedding planners online - as well as the sales department at Lufthansa) I have come to the conclusion that buying today would be a silly, financially irresponsible thing to do. Airlines don't post their seasonal sale prices until (maximum) 3 months out - sometimes not before a month out... but that's cutting it close for me. I'll wait until the end of August to search again. And hopefully get enough people together to take advantage of some sort of group rate.

I signed up for a bunch of airfare watcher emails (airfarewatchdog, bestfares, travelzoo, etc.) so that I can keep track of ticket prices without having to search every week. My fingers are crossed that not only will the Euro stay down (it's currently at 1.22) but also that plane ticket prices will PLUMMET.

-Etta

An Introduction

214 days until the wedding...

As you may have gathered - this is a wedding planning blog. Like many wedding planning blogs like it before and many that will follow - it's main purpose is to provide me with an outlet to purge my "wedding head" so that I don't annoy my fiance to the point of "wedding canceled."

Some details:

• My fiance BG and I have been engaged for a little over a year (it'll be two by the wedding date)
• We met while studying Philosophy, Logic & Ethics at university.
• We traveled to Athens in 2008 to celebrate our degrees and fell in love with the city.
• The wedding ceremony will take place in the city of Athens (which is what this blog is all about)
• The reception will be a few months later in California (we'll be combining it with a graduation party for BG's Juris Doctorate)
• We live in the pacific northwest

I plan on writing about what it's like to plan a wedding from about 7,000 miles away, booking vendors via email I'll never meet with until the wedding, and trying to stay within a fairly tight budget (especially considering it must cover six plane tickets).

-Etta