A Ukrainian couple got married in the UK surrounded by pictures of their family who couldn't make it - after the bride fled her war-torn home. Maria Bilyk, 23, and Vitalij Melynik, 27, maintained a long-distance between Ukraine and the UK since getting together in 2019.
Vitalij, who has lived in the UK for the past decade, proposed while visiting Ukraine in December 2021 and planned to marry in Lviv in June. But after the war began in February, the wedding was postponed and Maria had to flee her Lviv home to avoid mass shelling, leaving behind her mum and sister.
She crossed the Polish border into Warsaw and after three weeks she had the visa she needed to get into the UK so she could live with Vitalij. The couple, now settled into their new life in Feltham, west London together, finally married on November 14.
