Embassy Balks at Granting Visa for Balkan Bridesmaid

And you thought the Cold War was over.

A Ventura man and his Bulgarian bride-to-be are waging an all-out battle with the U.S. embassy in the former Communist nation to get the one thing they want for their wedding: a Bulgarian bridesmaid.

Michael Mellin, 55, will marry former Bulgarian actress Gergana Tzaneva, 40, March 21 at the Trinity Lutheran Church, surrounded by family and friends.

But unless the American consulate relents, Tzaneva’s best and oldest friend, Nikolita Kolcheva, will miss the wedding for lack of a tourist visa.

The consulate denied the 42-year-old Kolcheva a visa last month and, according to Mellin, told her she is an old, single woman with nothing to come back for, so “she may try to escape to the United States.”

But Mellin is a man in love, and he would move mountains for his bride-to-be if he could.

So with less than two weeks until the wedding day, Mellin is frantically appealing to congressional leaders to assist them in their plight. Mellin has also written letters to the U.S. ambassador in Bulgaria, criticizing the consulate’s failure to act on the couple’s behalf.

“First, applicants are told to show up at 8 a.m. to register,” Mellin wrote in an angry letter to the ambassador. “Then they are forced to stand outside of your consulate, in the cold for hours . . . like animals. This reminds me of the way the Nazis treated the Jewish people in Europe before the war, herd them up in yards and make them wait for nothing.”

The result of his pleas?

“No one responds,” he says. “It’s like a black hole.”

Kolcheva, the would-be bridesmaid, has been part of the budding cross-continental romance from the start. She has known Tzaneva for 17 years, putting her up when Mellin came to visit in their small town of Plevin. She also helped Mellin find the only zircon diamond ring in town when they got engaged.

If she makes it to the wedding, Kolcheva would be the only Bulgarian guest there.

“It is impossible for my mother to travel,” Tzaneva said. “But she told me if Nikolita comes, she will be a mother for me.”

Kolcheva, too, is devastated.

“She called and she was crying,” Tzaneva said. “After that, I was crying. We are Slavic souls.”

Mellin and his Slavic soul mate hooked up on the Internet.

Mellin, who worked for Prodigy, was writing a book on “virtual mating and dating,” looking at singles sites, searching for fraud and scanning for a wife.

“I never finished the book,” he said.

It was at blossoms.com--a Hawaii-based Web site that specializes in ads for wives from Asia, the Philippines and Eastern Europe--that he stumbled upon his Bulgarian sweetheart last year.

He flew to meet her in September and proposed six days later.

After securing a visa, he brought Tzaneva, her 13-year-old daughter, Clementina, and their Bulgarian boxer, Roy, home to Ventura.

Though sad about it, Tzaneva is not surprised her friend cannot get permission to come to the United States.

“For me it is normal,” she said. “A lot of these awful things happen in Bulgaria. I have come to think of it as the way things are.”

And she said she can understand why the consulate would be skeptical. The Balkan nation, like many other former Communist countries, is struggling under a fledgling democratic government. Many Bulgarians dream of coming to the United States.

To get a visa, applicants must line up early in front of the embassy. They must pay a $45 fee for each application--about half the average Bulgarian’s monthly salary. If they apply once, they get a black dot in their passports; twice and they are barred from reapplying for at least a year.

Responding to Mellin’s entreaties, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California) and Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) have written letters to the embassy in Sofia.

So Kolcheva will rise at dawn and head for the consulate for a final try next week.

Mellin and Tzaneva are waiting--and praying.

“I never lose the hope . . . for anything,” Tzaneva said.