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The Greek islands are attractive not only to tourists but also to members of the international jet set as reported by the Greek newspaper To Vima. Recently the islands in the Aegean Sea have become places hosting the personal celebrations of rich people from different countries.

They are sailing to the islands by their luxury yachts or are flying by the most advanced private aeroplanes to materialize their dream and organize their weddings there. At the same time, the islanders are counting the benefits of these social events which often provoke negative comments about the extravagance of the organizers.

An example of this was the wedding party of Vasmez Natad, a Lebanese multimillionaire, on Elia which is one of the most famous beaches in Mykonos. The popular R & B singer Seal had entertained the guests dancing barefoot on a gold stage. The host of the party and his equally rich guests had opened expensive bottles of Armand de Brignac Midas champagne, spilling their contents on the sand without drinking and throwing some of the bottles at disks placed on the gold stage mentioned previously.

The guests of the Lebanese multimillionaire had opened dozens of bottles of champagne in front of Seal. The price of each bottle is 120,000 euro.

In other cases, however, these events benefit the local communities. Such was the case of the wedding of Yiannis Martinos, the son of famous ship owner Dinos Martinos, on the small Cycladic island Schinoussa. The wedding ceremony and the subsequent celebration lasted four days.

The island had been completely transformed. The ship owner had paid the costs of supply of electrical equipment for the port and of the construction of roads. Five hundred people had been employed for the preparation of the high-life event, who had arrived in Schinoussa to serve the businessmen and ship owners invited to the wedding from around the world.
 
All hotel rooms on the island were full and the staff in the small restaurants was in a state of complete readiness. For four days, Schinoussa looked like the famous luxury resorts of Porto Cervo and St Barth.

In connection with his son's wedding Dinos Martinos had provided the island with huge infrastructures and mayor Yiannis Grispos expressed his gratitude to him in public.

The wedding of Alina Kaltsidis, the daughter of the "king" of cement in Russia Filaretos Kaltsidis, and Patrick Popraski, a Swiss of Polish descent and an important gold merchant, is widely discussed too.

They married in Pylos in the western Peloponnese and mayor Dimitris Kalafatis was one of the best men. A ritual resembling a religious marriage followed the ceremony. The bride had chosen to wear a dress by the famous Lebanese fashiosn designer Elie Saab.

The preparation for the social event had begun several months earlier. The bride arrived in Pylos last Thursday and the groom followed her by his private aeroplane the day before the wedding. The impressive wedding party took place at the estate of Alina’s father in the region of Koroni. According to Forbes magazine, Filaretos Kaltsidis is the richest Greek in the rankings for 2013.