A Wedding Over the Phone: He Was on the Frontline, She Was in a Registry Office

Iryna still remembers the moment a notification popped up on her phone: “Your video conference is waiting.” It wasn’t just another work meeting—it was her wedding. 

That morning, she got her hair done, tied a white ribbon, and went to work as usual. When she casually mentioned, “I’m getting married at noon,” her colleagues looked at her in confusion. Ten minutes before the ceremony, she grabbed her phone and rushed to an unfamiliar address, where her friends had set up a small celebration.

Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometers away, Serhii was in a frontline town, digging through his bag for the only formal thing he had packed—a denim blue shirt. No suit, no polished shoes, just the bolo tie he had always wanted to wear on his wedding day. His comrades laughed as they cleared a space for him, setting up a camera among sleeping bags and military gear.

They weren’t standing side by side when the moment came. Instead, they looked at each other through screens—Iryna in the registry office with friends and flowers, Serhii in a dimly lit room, the sounds of war never too far away. But the ceremony happened. The music played. They said, “I do.”

That evening, scrolling through Instagram, I saw their wedding video—short, surreal, and strangely beautiful. I messaged them: “Would you be open to sharing your story?” Iryna replied almost instantly: “Sure, why not?” Serhii agreed too—but with one request: “I’ll be in Kyiv in two days. Let’s meet in person. Just don’t tell Iryna. It’s a surprise.”

That night, as Iryna lay in bed, feeling the weight of her wedding day ending in solitude, she had no idea what was coming. In just two days, she wouldn’t need a screen to see him—he would be standing right there.

He couldn’t make it to the wedding itself, though Iryna kept hoping until the last moment that he might. But two days later, he managed to surprise her in person.

Still, the feeling lingers. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be,” Serhii later said. “If you have the chance to get married in person, do it. Be together.”

Thousands of Ukrainian couples have been forced to adapt—celebrating milestones through screens, waiting weeks or months for stolen moments together. “All of this—being apart, sleeping alone, not knowing when we’ll see each other—isn’t just ‘our thing,’” Serhii says. “It’s because we live next to a terrorist state, Russia. None of this would be happening otherwise.”

And yet, love persists. “We’ve gotten used to a way of life that seems completely strange to the rest of the world,” Iryna adds. “But we make it work.”

Life goes on

The fourth year of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine has begun. Air raid sirens still wail daily, frontline maps shift, and headlines remain grim. And yet, life continues. People fall in love, build families, and make plans.

Iryna and Serhii met in the summer of 2022 through work—an ordinary beginning in an extraordinary time. She was hiring for a position and happened to find Serhii’s old job application buried in her inbox. “I never do this,” she says. “I hate digging through old emails. But that day, for some reason, I kept scrolling.” His cover letter was confident, almost arrogant, but something made her respond. They started talking—first about work, then about everything.

By autumn, their connection had deepened, but the war had a way of accelerating everything. On October 10, 2022 Russia launched one of its heaviest missile attacks on Kyiv. “It felt like the end of the world,” Iryna recalls. As explosions rocked the city, she packed up her children and fled to a friend’s apartment. That day, he finally wrote: “I want to see you.”

They had met in person only once or twice before. But that night, Iryna made up an excuse, telling her friend she needed to “go to the post office.” “Which, of course, was ridiculous,” she laughs now. “Missiles were falling. But I left anyway.”

When she saw him, something shifted. “I just wrapped myself in his arms. I was scared, and he felt safe,” she says. 

From that moment, everything moved quickly. There was no space for hesitation. The war, the children, the uncertainty—it left no time for slow realizations. “You don’t get time to ‘see how things go,’” Iryna explains. “You integrate into each other’s lives because there’s no other way. You’re waking up in the middle of the night, grabbing the kids, running to the hallway because of air raid sirens. You just live in what you have.”

As their relationship grew, one truth loomed over them: sooner or later, Serhii would enlist. They both knew it. They didn’t have to talk about it much—it was simply a given, something tied to their values, to the way they saw the world. And yet, knowing didn’t make it easier. “For a whole year, we were preparing for that moment,” Iryna says.

When the time came, they traveled to Odesa together, where Serhii was finalizing his enlistment. They spent a few last days walking the beach, knowing their time together was running out. Iryna remembers driving back to Kyiv alone, crying. “I kept thinking, why are we doing this? Why does life have to be this way?” But the answer was obvious.

Once Serhii was stationed in Kramatorsk—a frontline city in Donetsk region where military and civilian life collide—Iryna visited constantly. Almost every weekend, she made the long journey to see him, like so many partners of soldiers who traveled there for stolen moments together. 

“I had so many preconceptions about Donetsk region,” she admits. “But I fell in love with Kramatorsk. The streets, the parks, and the only third-wave coffee shop that serves coffee and kebab. Of course, part of it was that he was there. But I truly loved the place.”

One day, before her usual trip, Serhii sent a strange request: “Dress nicely for the train.”

Iryna was suspicious. She had once told him how, during her first marriage, she wasn’t dressed up when she got engaged, and it had always bothered her. But she pushed the thought away. “I told myself, don’t even think about it. You’ll get your hopes up and be disappointed.”

When she arrived at the Kramatorsk train station, Serhii was waiting—with flowers, a ring, and a question.

She said yes.

War, separation, and a legal loophole for love

To love and build a life together in wartime, Ukrainians have had to adapt—to distance, to uncertainty, to the ever-present possibility of separation. 

For some, that meant hurried goodbyes at train stations. For others, it meant long months apart, waiting for brief reunions. And for many, like Iryna and Serhii it meant finding a way to make their commitment official, even when they couldn’t be in the same place. To meet this reality, Ukraine introduced a legal and digital solution: online marriage.

A legal workaround allowing couples—especially military personnel—to register their marriage remotely, without being in the same place. The concept itself wasn’t new. “We first considered online marriage back during the COVID-19 pandemic,” explains Valeriia Koval, Deputy Director of the Department for e-Service Development, Ukraine’s digital government services platform. 

“Back then, it was a response to restrictions on movement. But after the full-scale invasion, the need for it changed.”

By 2023, requests for online marriage were coming largely from military personnel—soldiers who wanted to marry their partners before heading to the front or those already deployed, unable to leave their units. There was also demand from couples split between Ukraine and different countries, separated indefinitely by war. 

In response, Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation worked with the Ministry of Justice to change regulations, allowing marriages to be registered entirely online. The law was passed on March 30, 2024, officially launching the service.

Since its rollout, online marriage has become a surprisingly popular choice. On average, 50 marriages are registered online per day—a number that continues to grow. The demand is so high that officials are now working on expanding the system, prioritizing slots for military personnel, according to Koval.

The process itself is relatively simple. Both partners must be Ukrainian citizens, over the age of 18, and not already married. The ceremony takes place over a secure video call, and once completed, the marriage is legally binding. It’s a deeply practical solution but also an emotional one. “For soldiers, planning a wedding in person is often impossible,” Koval says. “This service gives them the ability to marry the person they love, even if they’re far away.”

For Iryna and Serhii, it wasn’t the wedding they had imagined. But it was the wedding they could have. 

A wedding over the phone

The first proposal happened in Kramatorsk at the train station. The second one happened just a few hours later—this time, digital. “I opened the Diia app and thought, why not? Let’s test it,” Iryna recalls. “One click, and we’re married.”

Sitting together in a small apartment, she sent the request. A push notification popped up on Serhii’s phone: “Iryna has proposed to you.” “I was like, okay, I guess this is happening,” he laughs. But when he tried to confirm, the app wouldn’t process it.

At first, they thought it was a glitch. Then it happened again. And again. For months, they kept trying—refreshing, resubmitting, checking for updates. “We could have just gone to the registry office,” Iryna admits. “But I really wanted to do it through Diia.”

The problem, it turned out, was a bureaucratic one. Iryna’s divorce, finalized in court, hadn’t been updated in the system. According to the government’s records, she was still married. One day, a clerk from the registry office called her. “I see the issue,” she said. “I’ll press a button, and you’ll be good to go.”

The first available slot was March 5. Iryna grabbed it immediately. Serhii, sitting in a dugout with shaky Starlink internet, tried to confirm his side. “I remember that moment so well,” he says. “I was in a trench, explosions were heard in the distance, and at the same time, Iryna’s messaging me: ‘Hurry, confirm it now!’”

The actual ceremony was just as surreal.

At noon, Iryna sat in a bright room, surrounded by a few close friends, her hair perfectly styled. Across the country, in a dimly lit space filled with military gear and sleeping bags, Serhii and his comrades did the same. The officiant appeared on screen. The ceremony lasted several minutes.

“It felt like just another Zoom call,” Iryna says. “Except I was getting married.”

Afterward, friends took her out for lunch. In the evening, she met with more people to celebrate. The day felt full—until it wasn’t. That night, she lay in bed alone, staring at the ceiling. “I had just gotten married,” she says. “And yet, I was still sleeping alone.”

Serhii was already back on duty. The war didn’t pause for weddings.

More than just a marriage certificate

For many couples, an online marriage is less about tradition and more about practicality. It provides legal rights, access to military benefits, and a sense of stability in uncertain times. But beyond the paperwork, it’s also a way to keep moving forward instead of waiting for the war to end.

Since its launch, nearly 4,000 couples have registered their marriages online, and the demand continues to grow. “We see a huge interest from both military personnel and civilians,” says Valeriia Koval. “People aren’t waiting for the ‘right time’ anymore. They want their lives to reflect the reality they live in—modern, fast, and without unnecessary bureaucracy.”

For Iryna and Serhii, it was never a question of if they would get married—only how. They wanted the legal certainty that came with marriage, but a real celebration still mattered.

Waiting for the war to end was never part of their plan. “At the beginning, I thought there would be a clear ending—a day when we’d all come home waving flags, singing, celebrating victory,” Iryna says. “But weeks turned into months, then years. And at some point, you understand—this is life now. I don’t want us to freeze everything, only for our children to have to fight for the same things later. We do what we can to win, but we also have to live.”

Serhii shares the same mindset. “There’s no guarantee of ‘better times.’ If you have the chance to live now, you do it,” he says. “None of us know how long we have. That’s exactly why you don’t wait to get married.”

Iryna and Serhii know they want a wedding, but the details are still uncertain. They’ve picked a month and a meaningful location—Vytachiv, a scenic spot overlooking the Dnipro River, where they shared some of their first moments as a couple. But beyond that, they’re still figuring it out. There’s the curfew to consider, the logistics of getting guests outside the city, the unpredictability of war itself.

Still, they know one thing for sure: “We just want to do it. And for it to reflect our reality. But definitely not in pixelated clothes.”