- Oksana Bratseiko has spent seven years working in the wedding industry in Kyiv, Ukraine.
- Following Russia's attacks, she's had to adapt her weddings to cope with curfews and blackouts.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Oksana Bratseiko, a 29-year-old wedding planner at the Forever Bride Wedding Agency, who lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I've been working in Ukraine's wedding industry for seven years. Wedding planners have always had a lot of responsibility — you have to live up to a couple's expectations — but it's especially tough right now, when Russia's brutal assault on Ukraine has everyone's nerves strained.
I've had to adapt my weddings to comply with curfews and manage pre-wedding jitters that the constant anxiety of living in a country under attack only intensify.
I live in Kyiv with my husband and our young daughter, and I'm often very scared. My dad's a soldier, and I worry about his safety. I have lots of friends fighting on the front lines.
As a wedding planner, I'm dealing with a variety of professional challenges. More people are getting married: Kyiv registered 9,120 marriages in the first five months after Russia began its full-scale attack on Ukraine last February, compared with just 1,110 over the same period in 2021.
Peoples' fantasies haven't fundamentally changed. Girls still want beautiful wedding dresses and stunning photographs — but they're putting off their "perfect weddings" until the end of the war.
My team organized very few weddings in 2022 because most couples didn't bother with a big event: they opted for modest, last-minute weddings at Kyiv's City Hall.
Couples are inviting fewer guests because their budgets are overstretched, lots of people have lost work, and things are more expensive. And many peoples' friends have fled the country or headed to fight on the frontlines. Some have even lost loved ones, so they're not ready for a big celebration just yet.
Wedding planning in wartime Ukraine is special — but challenging
Everything was put on hold for the first few months after the war broke out in February 2022, and we didn't even start planning our first ceremony until May.
Ukraine is currently under martial law, which allows the government to impose restrictions on civilian movement in the interests of national security. We also have a curfew set for 11 p.m. so I've had to adapt my wedding schedules to fit in all the festivities. We have to work frantically to dismantle all the decorations in time for our contractors to get home before 11 p.m.
We're worried about power outages, so we're trying to pick venues that come with generators. These are pricier, but it's worth it for avoiding the extra stress of a blackout.
We've had to pay extra attention to our couples' psychological welfare. This involves more frequent check-ins in the run-up to the big day. The war has heightened everyone's emotions.
We started planning our first wartime wedding in May 2022
One couple, Vadym and Anna, were going to meet us to sign their wedding contract on February 25, 2022 — the day after Russia launched its full-scale invasion — but that obviously didn't happen.
They suspended their planning, but in May 2022, they got back in touch and told us they wanted to relaunch the preparations.
That was the first wedding we'd organized since the beginning of Russia's attacks. It was a stylish and classic ceremony with about thirty guests.
We hosted the reception on a terrace overlooking the Dnipro River, which runs through Kyiv. Vadym and Anna only invited their families, but they're planning a big party for all of their friends after our victory.
Some newlyweds are fundraising for the Ukrainian Armed Forces
Another couple, Roman and Victoria, paused their wedding plans after my team had been working with them since November 2021. We'd already booked most of the contractors and the caterers.
In June, four months after the start of the war, they decided that they didn't want to put their lives on hold forever — but they didn't want to get married without their families. Victoria's father was serving on the front lines in eastern Ukraine with the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and they didn't know when he'd be able to come home.
In the end, it all happened very quickly after Victoria's father was granted leave to attend. We dug straight into preparations and arranged an intimate, vibrant wedding in about a month.
In Ukraine, it's popular for guests to give the newlyweds elaborate bouquets of flowers. In lieu of flowers, Victoria collected funds to go toward buying an off-road vehicle for her father's unit. Army vehicles don't last long when facing heavy shelling, so soldiers always need more.
She'd already started fundraising on Instagram and raised the necessary total within a month of the wedding.
Planning weddings during wartime is like a light in the dark. Couples in love are very inspiring. Yes, organizing a wedding at a time like this isn't easy, but it gives a boost to everyone's life.