Top 10 Greek Wedding Gifts.
Greek weddings put the koumbaros or koumbara, the sponsor, at the centre, and that role is expensive in a way nobody warns you about. Everything else follows from the Orthodox calendar, which bars weddings outright on a long list of dates, most notably the whole first half of August.
What not to give
Read this before the list below. These are not preferences — several are genuine offences, and they are the part most gift guides leave out.
- 1–15 August — the church will not marry you The Dormition fast. The Orthodox calendar also bars 5–6 January, the whole of Great Lent, the Saturdays of the Souls, Monday of Pentecost, the Apostles’ Fast, 29 August, 14 September and 18–24 December. A Metropolitan can dispense for serious reason, but do not plan around that.
- An even number of koufeta Three, five or seven sugared almonds per favour — odd, so the marriage stays one and indivisible. The koumbaros distributes them, traditionally to the unmarried women.
- May, and leap years May is "the month of the dead" and couples who marry in it are said to divorce; a leap year is held to spoil any marriage, house or venture begun in it. Both beliefs are live, and both are actively debunked in the Greek press, but older relatives hold them.
- Komboloi (worry beads) Every English gift list suggests these. No Greek source connects them to weddings at all. A lovely object, and an entirely invented wedding tradition.
The ten
- 01
Cash in a fakelos (envelope)
The expected gift, handed over at the reception. Round numbers only — €100, never €92.50 — and never an empty envelope without a handwritten wish inside.
- 02
Stefana (wedding crowns)
The joined crowns worn in the ceremony, linked by a ribbon. Traditionally the koumbaros buys them, and they run €50–500 depending on the metalwork.
- 03
Stefanothiki (crown case)
The glazed case the stefana are sealed into afterwards, hung above the marital bed or beside the household icon stand. Sold separately from the crowns, so it works as a gift on its own.
- 04
Lampades (ceremonial candles)
The tall decorated candles carried in the service. Also the koumbaros’s to buy, at €30–150 a pair.
- 05
The diskos set — tray, carafe and glass
The ceremonial tray, wine carafe and shared glass used during the crowning. A €50–200 set, and the couple keeps it.
- 06
A hand-embroidered bed coverlet
The object the krevati ritual is staged around. Traditionally embroidered by a mother or grandmother, which is exactly why a good one bought as a gift lands well.
- 07
Icon of Christ or the Panagia
For the eikonostasi, the household icon corner. A traditional gift from godparents.
- 08
Evil eye (mati) charm
Blue glass, hung by the door of the new home. Baskania, the evil eye, is a category the Orthodox Church itself recognises, not merely folklore.
- 09
Handmade copper from Epirus
Tinned copper pans and coffee pots. Traditional Greek metalwork that is genuinely used.
- 10
Good olive oil and honey
From a named producer, ideally from the family’s own region. Simple, and never wrong.
If you are giving money
An envelope, handed over at the reception. Greek guidance from 2025 puts a distant relative or acquaintance at €50–80, a close friend or near family at €100–200, and the koumbaros or immediate family at €250 and up, with €50 the floor absent real hardship. Give round numbers, and always write a wish. Ignore the "€90 for a friend, €115 for a relative" figures that circulate on Greek sites — they trace back to an American Express spending survey conducted in the United States and have nothing to do with Greece.
To krevati — the making of the bed
- Two or three days before the wedding, before sunset, at the couple’s new home.
- Three or five unmarried girls make the bed completely — fitted sheet, top sheet, blanket, pillowcases, decorative pillows.
- They must have both parents living. This is the rule that matters, and it is a purity-of-fortune requirement rather than a decorative one.
- Rice for prosperity, money for a good financial life, and flower petals are thrown across the finished bed.
- Guests queue, take a little rice from a bowl, throw it, and add money of their own.
- Finally a young boy — again, both parents living — is rolled across the bed to secure descendants. Some hold that his sex predicts the couple’s first child.
Still performed, but performative: Greek bridal sources describe the krevati and the dowry alike as having largely become symbolic. The dowry contract itself, the proikosymfono, was abolished in Greek law in 1983.
What the koumbaros actually pays for
Being asked is an honour and a bill. Greek sources put the core obligations at €800–3,500 in 2026, and all of them stress that it is now negotiated with the couple rather than assumed.
- Stefana
- €50–500
- Lampades
- €30–150
- Tray, carafe and glass
- €50–200
- The priest’s fee
- €100–300
- The parish fee
- €100–500
- Church floral decoration
- €200–2,000, often shared or skipped
- The koufeta
- And distributing them during the service
What you will read that is wrong
- Plate smashing is not a Greek wedding custom It began in Athenian nightclubs, peaked in the 1960s and 70s, was criminalised under the junta with up to five years’ imprisonment, Onassis was among those referred to prosecutors, and had faded by the early 1990s, replaced by throwing flowers at the performer. Venues will happily sell it to you as an add-on. It is a cabaret act, not a rite.
- Signing the bride’s shoes is modern Unmarried friends write their names on the soles and whoever’s name wears away first marries next. Greek sources class it explicitly as a recent custom. English listicles present it as ancient.
- Money-pinning has no single target Vendors say it is pinned to the bride’s dress. A 2020 ethnography of the wedding dance in Vissani, Epirus — drawing on a 1949 manuscript in the Academy of Athens folklore archive — records guests sticking banknotes on the violinists’ foreheads. A Laconian village record has it pinned to the groom during his ceremonial shave. Anyone who tells you there is one correct way has read one page.
Written as common practice. Regional and family variation is enormous — if you are close enough to the couple to ask, ask. Nobody has ever been offended by the question.