We learned last week that permission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is not enough to marry a foreigner in Zhytomyr oblast. Instead, you have to also get permission from the oblast administration, in a particular office that only accepts the public on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Thus we finally hit a wall that we couldn’t get around, and we both took the day off to finish this nightmare that is called “trying to get married in Ukraine.”
We started in Zhytomyr, where a poofy-haired over-the-hill devushka with nothing better to do today examined all our documents in great detail, including all the ones she couldn’t read because they are written in English. Since these kinds of civil servants typically get some kind of sick pleasure out of putting up barriers and telling people “no”, I wasn’t surprised by her scrutiny. We are experienced bureaucrat fighters, though, and were prepared with everything in order. The best she could come up with to complain about was my poor penmanship, but we managed to convince her to overlook its sloppiness given the fact that I learned to write in an American school and not a Ukrainian one, and thus it’s not entirely my fault that I write poorly in Ukrainian.
After we paid 27 hrivna (about $5.50), she reluctantly printed and signed a one-sentence letter which stated that all our documents were in order (which was surprisingly similar to the letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which had also cost about $5). We drove on to Korosten, to the ZAGS (an acronym that almost no one seems to remember what it stands for), the place where you register to get married. They also very conveniently only accept the public on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
To make a very long and irritating story short, after pulling strings with numerous people and calling in favors from several of Igor’s acquaintances, we were at last able to submit our application to get married. The girl there also commented on my poor penmanship and the one small mistake I made, crossed out, and corrected. But since she had insisted that we each fill out the sections ourselves, in Ukrainian, she really didn’t have any right to reject my application based solely on my bad handwriting. Oh, and she didn’t like that I signed my name in English, either. Get over yourself, girl.
So, I think we have finally jumped through all the hoops of fire the Ukrainian bureaucrats could think up and we actually succeeded to register our wedding for 22 December.
We also bought our rings, and made reservations at the hotel. We are up to 13 people coming from the US, plus probably another five or six who will come from Kyiv. It was another struggle to make the hotel reservations, as they didn’t want to book the rooms more than a week or two in advance (oh, the joys of being a monopoly! The only hotel in town…), but we also managed to convince her to write down our reservations.
At one point, I actually started to wonder if there wasn’t a hidden camera somewhere following us, and that perhaps we’d see ourselves on TV next week on the local version of “You’re on Candid Camera!”. In the end, though, I do have to call the day a success. We checked off several critical items from the “to do” list.
Still to go – a dress, the reception menu, and various logistical issues.
Anka in Kyiv 