In the occupied Kherson, it was almost impossible to obtain Ukrainian documents – a child's birth certificate, inheritance documents, marriage certificate. However, the people of Kherson remained citizens of Ukraine in everything and even managed to hold a Ukrainian wedding.

Iryna and Oleg dreamed of a wedding at the beginning of summer on the bank of the river. However, in the occupation they decided not to wait. Before the war, the plans included traditional outfits, with a bride wearing a long white dress, but now the couple saw their wedding only in Ukrainian vyshivankas.

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Iryna says:

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"It took less than 10 days from our decision to the registration. Only one civil registry office in Kherson was still working - in the River Port district. This registry office is located in a regular residential building, so the invaders did not suspect that a Ukrainian state institution was operating there. The registry office worked, of course, underground, only on call. As long as there was Internet, employees had access to the Ukrainian database. However, a week before the wedding, the mobile connection disappeared completely, and all our preparations took place almost in the blind.

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We started to look for vyshivankas. Acquaintances told me that there is a shop that works and sells embroidered clothes. We felt like partisans: the door of the store was opened for us, and immediately locked behind us; the windows were tightly closed... These were the first vyshivankas we bought in our lives!

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Same secrecy with the wedding rings. There was no place to buy jewelry anymore, by some miracle we found a master jeweler, collected all the gold at home, even old golden dentures, and gave them to the master. And when we went to pick the rings, the connection was gone, how to find him? It's good that we knew in which house he lived, and the neighbors helped us.

We had a wedding on June 2, 2022. We brought vyshivankas to the registry office in bags; it was not possible to walk in them on the street. And we had a real Ukrainian ceremony - Ukrainian songs were played in the Ukrainian language, against the background of our flag, in embroidered dresses... We were just registered in the handwritten journal, but a Ukrainian certificate was issued. We wanted to drink champagne at the end, but the registry office employees said that we shouldn't attract attention... But on the way out, our witnesses showered us with rice, coins and candies, because we really wanted our traditions to defeat Russian terror and that slavery, even just a little bit".

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