Newlyweds dancing across a flagstone courtyard beneath bougainvillea-draped stone walls, bouquet raised high

Nine Years On: Carlie and Kaeman at Agreco Farm, Crete

Photographed by Bianca Sardi

Carlie and Kaeman married at Agreco Farm in Crete exactly nine years after their relationship began. Both are Canadian, raised on opposite sides of the country, and were brought together by their mothers, childhood friends who found each other again after 25 years. Fifty guests travelled out, many of them meeting for the first time. Their palette kept to ivory, white and cream, with one black tuxedo as the only dark note.

The farm sits among terraced olive groves in Adele, a village in the Cretan hills, its stone buildings and chimney towers half lost under ivy. Carlie wanted “the kind of beauty that feels lived in”, and the place already had it: honey-coloured walls, pale green shutters, terracotta urns, bougainvillea spilling over courtyard arches. From the air it is a cluster of tiled roofs in a sea of olive trees, mountains on the horizon, a rural and unhurried version of a wedding in Greece. The village name carried its own weight. “Shortly before discovering the venue, I’d asked my late Nonna Adelina for a little guidance in our search,” Carlie says. Adele is the English version of her name, and “it felt like a quiet nod from her.”

Almost all of it was planned from Toronto. “It required a lot of trust, with so many decisions made through photographs, AI renderings, and virtual conversations rather than in person,” Carlie says. Their planners, Athina and Iliana of Unique Wedding Concepts, pulled it together on the ground. Carlie works in a creative field and came with a clear brief: classic elegance, sculptural shapes, natural textures, and nothing that competed with the farm. “Rather than relying on colour, we focused on texture, form, and atmospheric lighting,” she says. Her advice to couples starting out is just as pared back: “Choose a venue you genuinely love as it is, establish your priorities early, and embrace the art of editing down. Not every corner needs to be a statement.”

The ceremony was held outside the farm’s small chapel, pink plaster and a bell tower, with rush-seat wooden chairs lined up along an aisle of white hydrangeas and roses. An arch of the same flowers framed the old wooden doors; nothing else hung from the plaster. “We poured our hearts into our personal vows,” Carlie says. She came through a bougainvillea-framed stone archway to “Archie, Marry Me” by Flyte, “one of those moments when the significance of everything really settled in.” The couple left under a storm of petals, then joined their guests for cocktail hour, after “setting aside 15 minutes alone together to take everything in.”

Dinner was laid on long wooden tables beneath olive trees lit from below, white runners down the middle and white roses tumbling from the branches. “We wanted our guests to feel like participants in the celebration rather than simply witnesses to it,” Carlie says. Each place held a hand-stamped letter that doubled as a name card, a commissioned poem on one side and a handwritten note on the other, with a slit cut to hold a photo booth strip. “Watching our guests open their handwritten letters at dinner and seeing so many become emotional was something we’ll always remember.” The cocktail napkins carried excerpts from the couple’s long-distance text messages, which became “one of the most talked-about details of the wedding, offering unexpected little glimpses into the years that brought us to that day.” Agreco Farm’s own Cretan food filled the courses, “a natural extension of why we’d chosen the island”, until a saxophonist arrived halfway through and had “everyone on their feet dancing between courses.”

Later came the second looks: a crystal-fringed dress that caught every candle, a shimmery jacket, and a surprise bachata to “Volare”. Then tiramisu, and fireworks over the farm. At the chapel doors, now lit by lanterns, the couple fed each other from a tower of dessert coupes. Kaeman ended the night in braces and a bow tie under string lights, jacket long gone. Considered, yes, but in Carlie’s words “never too precious to have fun”.