Lining Up for Wedded Bliss in the U.S.S.R

With its vaulted ceilings, marble stairways and fluted white columns, the Central Palace of Solemn Events in this Ukrainian capital looked much like a post-modern cathedral. There was even a choir that sings traditional Ukrainian songs for wedding ceremonies.

But the palace was built pre- perestroika , when religion was a crime, Lenin was God and the totalitarian Soviet state was parent, policeman and priest. Far from a church, it is more like a wedding factory that churns out newlyweds every 10 minutes.

Its triangular shape promotes a smoothly running assembly line of brides and grooms--but has earned it the popular nickname “The Bermuda Triangle.”

“That’s because men’s fates are destroyed here,” joked my then-fiance, Oleksandr, when we first went there in September.

Like everything else in the Soviet Union, getting married is a surreal bureaucratic process of paperwork, stamps and queues. While this may also be true in the United States, the American bureaucracy is just a prelude to the main event. For most Soviet couples, however, it’s everything.

With new religious freedoms, many people here are choosing church ceremonies. But those have no legal force until all palace procedures are completed.

Those procedures began with filing a Joint Declaration of Intent to Marry with the Registry of Citizen’s Status Acts.

Next we waited in line for a marriage interview that, for most, was a simple formality to verify information on the declaration.

Because I am American, nothing was simple. I had to provide an official statement of marital status and notarized translations of my passport and divorce decree.

My parents faxed the divorce papers in a day. The rest required maneuvering a separate administrative maze that even for me, a former Century City lawyer accustomed to rules and regulations, was exhausting and confusing.

Actually, just about everything here is exhausting and confusing.

When I first visited Kiev as a tourist two years ago, life seemed too difficult to imagine staying. I changed my mind after I returned to research a book about Ukrainian independence last year and met Oleksandr, an activist in the nationalist movement, Rukh.

It’s been an adjustment. But by the time we started arranging our wedding, I had learned tricks to getting things done the Soviet way.

For example, nothing can be settled over the telephone because bureaucrats hang up if you presume to ask a question. Everything must be done in person.

At the U.S. Consulate, officials gave me the marital status document in 10 minutes. But that required a verifying stamp from the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, which apparently needed 24 hours to find an ink pad. In order to pay the 8-ruble fee (about 20 cents at the tourist exchange rate) for the service, I had to go to a bank down the block and wait in a queue of people paying phone bills. (This is not done by mail because checking accounts don’t exist.)

I translated the passport and divorce papers into Ukrainian myself and trotted off to a notary for verification. After barging through three doors marked “Do Not Enter,” I finally learned that the translators work only on Fridays.

That was Tuesday. When I returned, the translator was very nice once I told her I was American; she even got me to the front of the line.

But then an old woman complained, yelling: “What are you doing? Where’s your number?”

I ignored her, but she followed me inside, where the notary glanced at my documents and told me to get back in line. Meanwhile, the woman kept complaining.

I lost my patience.

“I’m an American,” I shouted. “I don’t have a number and don’t know how to get one.”

The woman backed off, and the notary stamped the passport translation. She wouldn’t notarize the divorce, because it was a fax.

Still, not knowing what else to do, we went to the registry.

A clerk, confused by the international complications of my application, passed it to her colleague, who shuffled through the papers and held up my divorce translation.

“It’s not an original, so they wouldn’t stamp it,” I explained.

She seemed satisfied and filled out a card, inviting us to be married in the palace on Oct. 24--the required one month plus one day after the completed declaration.

It also allowed us to go shopping.

With shortages of everything from socks to nightgowns, the Soviet authorities thoughtfully set aside special stores called “Youth” for brides- and grooms-to-be. There, we could buy what wedding bureaucrats have decreed is the minimum requirement of clothing.

It’s not exactly Bullock’s.

At “Youth,” we showed our palace invitation and passports, and a computer printed out two cards allowing us to buy items listed on a sheet of paper taped to the counter: clothing for the groom; a wedding dress, accessories, toiletries, and 10 bouquets for the bride; two sets of sheets, one set of tablecloths and napkins for the newlyweds.

But permission to shop isn’t the same as buying. My mother sent a wedding outfit from the States, so I only went to “Youth” to help Oleksandr find a suit. The three times we went to the store, however, there were none in his size.

In the end, we only bought some dish-washing detergent and shampoo. Oleksandr had an old suit refitted.

Wedding rings were next. To buy them required Oleksandr’s passport, shopping cards and visiting 10 jewelry stores.

Usually, they didn’t have our sizes. But once, when suitable rings were in stock, we stood in a queue for an hour, only to have the last one in my size sold to the couple ahead of us. Oleksandr finally got the rings two days before our church ceremony when he persuaded a store manager to let him cut in front of a block-long line.

The church ceremony was Oct. 18, and 50 guests--including my father and brother from New York and my aunt from a collective farm in the southern Ukraine--arrived in Kiev.

The ceremony was held in Kiev’s ancient Podol district, in a 300-year-old chapel of the previously illegal Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. The guests held candles, and the choir was lovely, but the priest ruined the atmosphere for me with his sexist homily. “You represent the better half of humanity,” he told Oleksandr.

The day after our wedding, Oleksandr’s mother brought us an official note, sent to her address, asking us to return to the registry. There, we were told that the divorce judgment had to be translated by Intourist, the official travel bureau whose stamps are accepted by the registry. Luckily, that office was near and there was no line. We dropped off the judgment, picked up the translation the next day and took it to the registry.

Finally, our file was complete.

On Oct. 24, with our two witnesses, we climbed the marble staircase into the palace.

“Where’s your receipt?” asked the wedding administrator when we tried to register our arrival.

Oleksandr dutifully paid the 100-ruble (just over $2) fee and brought back the receipt that allowed us to be married.

“You should have held your ceremony at a local palace. It would have been cheaper,” said the administrator, who evidently felt sorry for us. Our wedding party was tiny and, in my winter boots, I didn’t look much like a bride. My bouquet was a single tea rose.

All the other couples who arrived for the 10 a.m. time slot were dressed in full wedding regalia and brought their entire families.

At the palace, when five couples wait their turn, they look like an assembly line of plastic figurines on a wedding cake. An identical queue of brides and grooms waited on the other side of the triangle. This way, the palace can churn out two couples at a time.

“It’s dehumanizing,” observed my witness, a Canadian journalist.

Finally, our names were announced over a loudspeaker and an escort led us into the East Hall of Solemn Events. “This one’s in Ukrainian!” she announced.

The mistress of ceremonies gave a little speech with no sexist advice and guided us to a podium, where we signed our names on the marriage certificate. We all drank a little champagne and walked out through a different door, into the Exit section of the palace.

It was over in just three minutes. In the eyes of whatever government is running the Ukraine these days, we were married.

But although the palace does look like a cathedral, and the mistress of ceremonies resembles a priestess in her purple robe and medallions, the trappings couldn’t remove the bureaucratic chill from what, in the end, was just another office, and another queue, and another stamp on a piece of paper.