You're reading: ‘Mixed’ marriages flourish in Kyiv

The entrance to Kyiv’s central registration office looks like a bizarre conveyor for production of newlyweds.

Couples arrive, pose on the stairs for a picture and then move inside to give way for the next couple. Some arrive by limousine and are classically dressed: the brides in ornately designed white gowns, grooms in black or grey suits.

Others come by taxi, wearing casual attire, showing up only to collect marriage certificates. Dressy or not, about 10 percent of the 9,000 unions in the last six months were between a Ukrainian and a foreigner.

Liudmyla Dudnik, the Central Registration Office’s lead specialist, says the “mixed” weddings are not much different from the local ones – except that they overwhelmingly involve foreign men and Ukrainian women.

American Brian Gessler, 28, met his wife Yulia Gessler, 24, four years ago in Kyiv while he worked as an English teacher.  The couple moved to America and married shortly after their meeting here. While Brian Gessler says there is much more joy in his marriage, there are trying times, too.

“She is down to earth, and didn’t even complain when we were sleeping on the floor of our new house, and bathing in the back yard after dark. We didn’t have a kitchen, or hot water from the tap. She said she grew up without hot running water and that it just reminded her of her childhood,” he says.

The only conflicts that the Gesslers have had were money-related. “We rarely fight and argue, but it’s about how much my parents help us compared to hers most of the time,” Brian Gessler says.

Psychologist Olena Bohatyriova says that marital problems between spouses of different nationalities are often rooted in culture.

“In the West the fight for equal rights reached its apogee, while in Ukraine most women still believe that their men have to be the breadwinners. They can’t get used to the fact that, let’s say, paying the rent in equal shares is normal” in many countries outside Ukraine, she says.

But budget issues as well as adjustments to daily life together can be conquered by love, Bohatyriova adds.

Yulia and Brian Gessler wear Ukrainian traditional embroidered shirts in Kyiv ahead of their wedding in 2010. (Courtesy)

“My fiancé is a great cook and I have a restaurant of American cuisine at home, and he has a restaurant of Ukrainian cuisine…and we both enjoy it so much,” says Marianna Mykhailiuk, 23, a Ukrainian from Lviv who is engaged to a 28-year-old American man.

Mykhailiuk says that too much emphasis is placed on problems between spouses related to cultural differences. “It can be even more difficult in a marriage with a compatriot,” she says.

“The differences between partners are often the main attractions for those who marry foreigners, and these differences seem to be very special at the starting stage of relationships,” says Alla Dashko, a Kyiv psychologist. “But one should keep in mind that every personality also includes national identity.”

Cultural differences aside, there are legal and bureaucratic hurdles to overcome. Alyona Adamkovych-Patti has been married for less than six months and hasn’t seen her husband Joseph Patti since the wedding.

Messages of love to each other splatter their Facebook timelines, but the last picture of themselves together is from their wedding day.  Joseph Patti is American and left for home soon after marriage because of his job. She stayed behind to do the paperwork to join him.

“We thought we were nearly done when we finally got married and left all the bureaucratic horrors of preparing the right documents for registration behind. But we couldn’t have imagined that we’d have to stay apart for so long,” she says. “I’m not even able to predict when I’ll be able to reunite with my husband.”

The bureaucratic war is almost over for the Gesslers. After three years, Yulia Gessler is eligible for American citizenship in December.

Cultural differences have never been a big problem for this couple. “One of the strongest bonds we have is that I have first-hand knowledge of where she is from and how that influences her as a person,” Brian Gessler says.

Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna Shevchenko can be reached at [email protected].