As Ukraine celebrated its 33rd year of independence, I’m invited to a wedding, an all-day event.

The young bride, after a lifetime of preparation, wears a white-ribboned wedding dress so new it still has the price tags dangling from it. She hasn’t had time to learn how to walk in her tall wedding shoes, so at the reception, she abandons them, preferring to go barefoot, skipping across the dance floor.

The reception is lavish, over-the-top for any Ukrainian budget. About 80 guests are seated at large, decorated round tables, piled high with traditional cold-cuts, salads, cheeses and bottles of wine. I realize that over 85% of the people in this room are women. The handful of men are either groomsmen on a two-day leave from the front lines or retired grandpas and uncles. Many of the women are widows. Without exception, every person at the wedding has lost at least one family member to the war. So many of the men in Ukraine have either been killed or are on the front defending their country — and the rest of Europe.

A round-faced MC, with a booming voice, sounding like Bob Eubanks on “The Newlywed Game,” asks participants, “What’s the groom’s nickname on the bride’s phone?” In another contest, he brings out a bathroom scale and weighs several guests at the beginning of the celebration and near the end to see who has eaten the most. At this wedding, guests don’t clink their glasses with utensils to encourage the bride and groom to kiss; instead, they approach the wedding table and drop to the shiny floor to give them a rapid succession of push-ups. A 68-year-old solid grandpa drops to give ‘em not 20 but 30 — the last 10 being one-armed push-ups. Later, a 6-year-old girl, with oversized glasses and red hair, drops and gives ‘em 10.

I met Roxalana, an MD, several months ago as she delivered a cup of hot coffee to the love of her life’s snow covered grave. Sitting on my right, she leans into me to explain that many of the wedding guests are linked through the cemetery in Lviv, having formed their own family through heartbreak and loss. “That older man who just did the push-ups, had two sons. The Russians killed one of them and cancer killed the other one.”

Natalia, with cropped light hair, who always seems to be smiling and reminding her friends, “I love you”, sits next to Roxalana — another sister united in grief and survival. The first time I met Natalia, she was sitting on a small bench next to her brother’s grave. Barely two weeks later she became frantic, trying to call her husband, a soldier on the front lines. After a cadaver exchange, she walked with his soldier-flanked casket into Lviv’s Garrison Temple, and later to the ever expanding cemetery where diggers lowered him into a grave near her brother.

I glance around the table. Lyuda is to my left. We became friends in 2022, some weeks after I photographed her husband’s funeral, so gut-wrenching, I still tear-up remembering it. Last week was his birthday. He would have been 50. Next to her, sits 25 year-old Bogdana. When we became friends a year ago, she told me, “I may look like I’m okay on the outside, but on the inside, I am dead.” Especially with her, time has helped heal. Tonight she’s all smiles. I lean across to tell her that she looks like a movie star. Bogdana lets out a laugh and heads for the dance floor.

The groom briefly vanishes to change out of his suit and into his military uniform. It’s not clear to me if this is because he wants to wear it proudly or if it’s because he could get the call to return to duty at any moment — or both. The booze flows freely, but no one gets plastered. Responsible drinking seems to be the code, especially at the edge of a war zone. When the band cranks up the music, everyone is on the dance floor, joyous, celebrating the only thing worth fighting and dying for — love.

Valeriia, who has become the daughter I never had, sings into the hand-held mic, leading a long, dancing line of happy women, snaking through the ballroom. I’m shocked with surprise, seeing her talent unfold, putting her recovering joy on full display.

As the night draws to a close, I find myself standing at the edge of the dance floor, watching the bride and groom swaying together, lost in the music and each other’s arms. There’s a moment where their eyes meet, and despite the laughter and joy surrounding them, I see a flicker of something else — an unspoken understanding of the uncertain road ahead — the cold reality waiting outside these walls. But for now, they hold each other tight, as if clinging to these fragile moments of joy. In Ukraine, that’s all anyone can do.

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