Feature: Wedding on unspoiled beaches of home of the Goddess of Love

The sight of a just married bride splashing in the sea in her expensive wedding gown is becoming a frequent feature at Ayia Thekla, a stretch of picturesque beaches on the south shores of Cyprus.

As more and more people opt to marry on the beach, several young couples make it a point -- some of them consider it a luck token -- to spoil their wedding attire in the turquoise and green shallow sea.

Ayia Thekla is a stretch of unspoiled coastline next to the Ayia Napa beaches on which thousands of mostly young holidaymakers bask in the sunshine every day.

It is within the boundaries of Sotira village, a mostly agricultural community several kilometers inland, producing mainly potatoes, tomatos. But the community has come out dynamically in tourism, mostly concentrating on offering wedding schemes to young couples on summer vacation.

"We started with a few weddings in 2013. We had about 100 weddings last year and we'll end with over 300 this year," said Marinos Pavlikas, in charge of the weddings section of the Sotira Municipality.

Ayia Thekla shot into world fame after Thomas Cook recommended it as the perfect place to hold a beach wedding in its Summer 2016 "Travel" magazine, listing similar destinations in the Greek Islands, Malta, Venice, Cape Town, Majorca and Los Angeles.

"The famous Ayia Thekla beach in Sotira is a lovely stretch of coastline where waters lap the shore... You couldn't find a more picturesque place for a wedding to remember," noted Tomas Cook's "Travel" magazine.

Pavlikas is kept busy every day arranging marriages or accompanying couples to the site to choose the spot of their liking.

"We offer facilities for either a beach wedding on one of our three beaches -- Poseidon, Ayia Thekla and Sirens -- of a church wedding in an all-denomination chapel next to the beach," Pavlikas told Xinhua, just after arranging another beach marriage.

Ayia Thekla was named after a chapel dedicated to a saint of the same name which was originally set up in an underground tomb chiseled in the beach rock -- a common feature of the nearby Makronisos (long island) necropolis of the Helenistic and Roman eras. An above the ground chapel was built later nearby.

Compared to its neighboring noisy cosmopolitan beaches of Ayia Napa, Ayia Thekla is a pristine region. There is not a single hotel in the vicinity, the only other tourist facilities being a complex of 12 hotel apartments well inland and a couple of restaurants.

The color pattern of the sea is remarkable, changing between turquoise and dark blue, depending on the time of the day and the amount of cloud and its color in the sky.

"Cyprus is the home of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. So if you are true romantics, there is not better place to choose to tie the knot," is the enticing message of the Sotira Municipality.

Pavlikas said that most of the marriages take place is May, which is rather early in the tourist season and in September, when there are fewer people on the beaches and the sometimes brutal Mediterranean summer changes into a mellow autumn.

They have the choice of a palm tree backdrop for their wedding or the settings of rocks lining the beach.

"Some people prefer to marry just before noon. But most arrange their marriage near sunset, when the sky is tinted purple and the sun sends streaks of light on the sea surface," he added.

He said he has seen couples who are so much carried away by the general surroundings that they wade with their wedding attire in the shallow lagoon formed between an islet and the beach.

The entire wedding ceremony can cost up to 500 euros, which is only a fraction of what it would cost people back home.

Some prefer more elaborate arrangements, hosting a wedding meal or dinner for their guests or treating them to a tour in an open-roofed bus, champagne and all, through the streets of nearby resorts.

Holidaymakers, many of them still in their bathing suits strolling along the busy streets lined with shops and cafes, cheer as the newlyweds pass by. Endit