Yulia and Tetiana had spent a while deliberating over a date for their wedding before they decided it had to be 1 March – exactly a year to the day they fled the war in Ukraine.
“That date should be a sad anniversary, the anniversary of us leaving our old life behind, but we decided to rewrite this story and made it our special anniversary,” said Tetiana, 42. “We lost a lot and there is a lot of evil in this world, but we’ve turned that evil into something good.”
Yulia, 44, added: “We decided to exchange a bad memory for a better one.”
They married at Ripley town hall in Derbyshire in the presence of their closest friends, describing it as “something very special”.
On the day they wore matching T-shirts featuring the quotes “Love you to the moon and back”. “I know it’s a very common phrase, but for me it was always about our feelings and our relationship,” said Tetiana.
The couple have been together for 10 years and have long wanted to get married. But same-sex marriages and civil partnerships are not recognised in Ukraine, despite hope for the introduction of LGBT rights laws after the ousting of the country’s pro-Russian president in 2014.
The circumstances of their nuptials are bittersweet for the couple, who always knew they would have to go abroad to get married, but never expected to be doing so in the context of the invasion of their home country.
“It really was very strange that our dream came true but in such a weird way. It has been difficult,” said Tetiana. “It’s not the price we expected to pay for getting married,” added Yulia, who is originally from Russia.
The couple, who worked as translators in Ukraine, said Russia’s full-scale invasion highlighted their fragility as a couple when they could not legally declare their relationship, so their decision to get married was, in part, “a pragmatic one”, said Yulia.
“Officially we were just friends. We made our wills to be in favour of each other, but that is the only official link between us in Ukraine,” said Tetiana.
“Love and romance is wonderful, but we are so fragile and ephemeral. Official marriage is something very legal and solid, and when there is war, it is so important for people to be protected.”
The couple live in Belper, Derbyshire, where they initially moved in with their sponsors, Sarah and Helen Barley-McMullen, who had set up a group specifically to help LGBT Ukrainians reach the UK.
They have since moved into their own rented flat nearby. Both are self-employed as translators, and Yulia now also works part-time in a college, while Tetiana is also looking for work to help her fully integrate into British life.
“I knew we had fully settled when we got a letter from the council about our council tax. I was so glad. To me, this letter was a result of our efforts to settle and get our own place. I was like, ‘Look at me, I’m a real British taxpayer!’” said Tetiana.
“But more important than that is the friends we have made. We have friends we are going to watch the coronation with, we have friends that we have Easter lunch with. And that is the most important thing: the people.”
Although they hope to return to Ukraine after the war, the couple said they were thriving in their new life in the UK, particularly living among people so accepting of their relationship.
“It is still unbelievably wonderful to have so much acceptance here,” Tetiana said. “We are not rejected. When we told people we were going to get married, absolutely no one said: ‘But you’re two women!’ Everyone just said congratulations.
“It was and it still is so wonderful.”
