Vlada and her husband Ivan with their mothers on their wedding day.
registration office on the western edge of Kyiv. Some of those waiting are wearing casual clothes, but a few of the women are dressed up in white and carrying bouquets of flowers.
This is hardly anyone's dream wedding venue, and yet, it's a very popular spot on a random Tuesday in July.
When it's their turn, Vlada, in a lacy white dress, whispers to her soon-to-be-husband Ivan, "all my life has led to this day," as they walk inside hand-in-hand.
Ivan, a massage therapist turned army medic, used his single day off from the front line in June to propose; this month he's managed to get away barely long enough to wed his girlfriend of one year. The couple asked not to use their last name for security reasons.
"The [wedding] procedure itself became easier during martial law. It was harder for me to get here [to Kyiv] than it was to actually get married,"
Vlada, an architect, and Ivan are part of what, anecdotally, appears to be a surge in Ukrainian couples where at least one member is serving in the military getting hitched on short notice. This is thanks, in part, to martial law which has removed the usual one-month waiting period between notifying authorities of the intention to marry and the wedding itself. The change is intended to allow military couples to marry with the limited time they have.
"Now we are living in a very dangerous time, and maybe people who were planning tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, or in a year to get married, have realized that we're living today -- here and now. Maybe that's where their decision comes from," wedding officiant Oksana Poberezhets
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