"Ceremonies take 10 to 15 minutes but we do give them a good show!" he adds.
Michaelakis enjoys his job. "You see a lot of emotion," he says. "And love knows no barriers."
In parts of the Middle East there have been attempts to legalise civil marriage but religious leaders have used their political influence to block them.
Some countries simply impose Islamic or Sharia law but others have set-ups rooted in Ottoman times. These allow different religious communities to operate their own courts and parallel systems of family law.