PAPHOS leads the pack in Cyprus’ newest growth industry, civil weddings, having collected £230,000 for marriage ceremonies in 2000, and expecting to surpass this mark in 2001.
Nine hundred and sixty weddings were held Paphos town hall last year, while an additional 360 permits for weddings were issued for other sites other than the town hall.
Trailing Paphos were Larnaca with 900 weddings, Ayia Napa with 800, Nicosia with 395 and Limassol with 250.
Paphos’ success has aroused the jealousy of other municipalities and has caused a few local problems as well. On many occasions the mayor himself is forced to interrupt meetings or postpone appointments in order to preside over the wedding ceremonies.
The peak months are May, September and October where there are many marriages on a daily basis.
Because the ceremonies are so popular, a special wedding hall has been set up at the town hall to accommodate the droves wanting to tie the knot.
The best customers of the Paphos municipality are the British, followed by Israelis, who are not allowed civil weddings back home. Council member Savvas Heracleous told Politis that the British and the Israelis seemed to prefer Paphos because the town was connected to the legend of Aphrodite. He said that currently, this aspect of Paphos as a wedding location, had not been advertised abroad, but reports that the municipality intended to start doing so soon.
A spokesperson for Ayia Napa Municipality informed the Cyprus Mail yesterday “a lot of weddings were held in the year 2000 because of the millennium.” However, she added that “all the bookings for 2001 are not in yet, but they expect around the same number this year,” suggesting that civil weddings are a rising trend.
Tourism also benefits from a high volume of weddings, since many couples bring along their friends and relatives, while the majority of those who get married in Paphos return there for their anniversaries. According to reports, officials working in some municipalities have contacted tourist agencies abroad offering attractive packages for holiday weddings.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
