Our wedding plans are slowly moving along. I passed the first hurdle, actually the first two. A friend was in the US in July and Dad sent her the notarized and apostilled copy of my divorce decree, which she brought back to me. And then this past Friday I went to the US Embassy (for the first time ever in nearly 2 years in Ukraine!) and got my “Letter of Non-impediment to Marriage”, which cost 30 freaking dollars!
The Embassy was an experience in and of itself. I’ve heard the horror stories, not just about the American Embassy but about pretty much all western Embassies, but it was something else to see it in person. I had been warned that the line wasn’t for me, that I should go right up to the door and they’d let me in, but man was it ever uncomfortable walking through that horde of people who’d been waiting for god-knows-how long and who still had hours and hours to go. And when I got inside the compound I found out there’s ANOTHER line inside, but not inside the building, they still have to wait outside, rain or shine, heat or cold. What are they thinking when they build those places? Don’t they know there will be hundreds of people every day? They can’t build at least a big hall inside where people could wait? I mean, for the Ukrainians of course. The waiting room for Americans is of course inside, with a comfortably-maintained temperature, chairs, a water cooler, even little tables and chairs for kids with coloring books and crayons. The contrast, to say the least, is drastic.
Anyway, I have my so-called Marriage Letter, and the next step is to take it along with my divorce decree to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to get them authorized or something like that. I think most people go straight from the Embassy to the Ministry to get it all done in the same day, but I didn’t have the energy for it, and I was glad to hear that I can go anytime in the next six months. I’ll probably go in the next or two. After that, I have to get all the English documents translated into Ukrainian and then everything notarized, and then we can go to the marriage registry place in Korosten and schedule our wedding! Whew.
Dad and his sister, my Aunt Mary Ellin, have already bought their plane tickets for Ukraine. After they wedding, they plan to go to Egypt for New Year’s. Mary Ellin will go back to the US right after that, and Dad will come back to Ukraine to spend Orthodox Christmas with us and Igor’s family (January 7). We’ll have 4 holidays in the span of about 3 weeks! The wedding, western Christmas, New Year, and Orthodox Christmas. Now that’s what I call a holiday season!
Anka in Kyiv 