The Rev Paul Gibson, founder of Gran Canaria Weddings describes his day
I WAS AN Anglican priest, but I didn’t like the way things were going, so I left and became an independent priest. I set up my own church, the Church of San Sebastian.
I’ve been a wedding planner here in the Canaries for three and a half years, and the great thing is that I can do everything for clients, from the marriage ceremony to booking the limos.
I live in Playa del Ingles, and most days I start at around 10am in the office. The morning will be taken up going through e-mails and sorting through requests.
We get around 50 a week, and many are from Ireland. I have an arrangement with Sunway which works well: I do the wedding planning and they look after the flights and accommodation.
The big appeal of getting married here is the value: you can have the whole day, for 100 people, for €9,000. That includes everything, from the flowers to the food and a night of entertainment that goes on until 4am. It’s always sunny here, too, unless you get married in January, which few people do. We get around nine days’ rain a year, and they’re mostly in January.
Almost all my weddings take place at the Gloria Palace Hotel, in Amadores, and I can do the ceremony on the terrace if they wish, though I have a chapel. I do religious and non-religious ceremonies. Weddings should be fun. And they shouldn’t be more than 25 minutes long.
They should also be very personalised, so I spend a lot of my day writing services for each couple, including references to how they met, or to the bridesmaids or groomsmen.
I also allow pop music. We almost always have Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You playing. Recently we had Europe’s The Final Countdown.
If a couple’s children are there I always include them in the ceremony and lift them up so they are part of everything.
In the afternoon I go over every wedding I have scheduled for the next three weeks, to make sure final preparations are in order. I’ve 212 weddings booked for next year with, on average, 100 people attending each.
If it’s a wedding day I’ll be at the hotel from 7.30am, to make sure everything’s in order and give the bride a bottle of champagne and some glasses. I’ll also make sure she has lunch, because sometimes they forget to eat – and then they pass out in the heat. I have to make sure the groom is there, and sober, too.
Weddings take place at 4pm, because any earlier and it’s too hot. I’ll stay around until the first dance starts, usually at around midnight, and then I’ll slip away. If I stayed any longer it’d be a 4am night for me, too.