Friends and family members arrived from near and far — by long trips on planes, trains, and buses — to attend the Sept. 14 wedding of Ethan Bregman and Olha Beskhmelnytsina in Lviv, Ukraine.
Ethan Bregman, the son of the artist Arlene Slavin and the attorney Eric Bregman of Wainscott, had first met his future wife, Ms. Beskhmelnytsina, at the wedding of mutual friends in October 2019. Neither was single at the time, but two years later, when they met again at their friends' anniversary party in Spain, they were both available — and realized there was romance in the air. They became an official couple after their February 2022 trip to Venice, but still lived oceans apart: Ms. Beskhmelnytsina in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Mr. Bregman in New York City.
When it came time to pick a venue for the wedding, it became clear there were decisions to be made. "If we choose to have a wedding in Ukraine, my friends and family can choose to come or not, and if we have a wedding outside of Ukraine, many of her family don't have the choice," Mr. Bregman recalled in an email. "For me, it was obvious to give the choice rather than to take it away."
Mr. Bregman, 44, is a designer of engines in the professional motorsport industry who grew up in Wainscott, and Ms. Beskhmelnytsina, 38, and a lifelong resident of Kyiv, is a producer of documentary films and television shows and is chairwoman of the Ukrainian Film Academy. She is the daughter of Mykolai Beskhmelnytsin, a retired nuclear physicist at Schevchenko University, and Maria Beskhmelnytsina, who was an administrator at the institution now known as Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.
To their rehearsal dinner, the bride and groom wore modern versions of traditional Ukrainian clothes called vyshyvanka, styled by Lesia Patoka. Olha Beskhmelnytsina's reception gown was made by their friend and fashion designer Oksana Ostrovskaya, who was also a guest. In all, 65 people attended their nuptials at the Edem Resort in Strilky, for which a friend, Oksana Nechyporenko, was the officiant.
Among their Ukrainian guests were soldiers, a nurse, humanitarian workers, and educators — including a cousin who attended in a wheelchair, having been wounded in a battle against Russian armed forces. Many of the American guests traveled 16 hours by coach bus via Warsaw, since no commercial airlines are now flying into Ukraine because of the war.
The bride was attended by her maid of honor, Zoya Lytvyn, who leads a nonprofit focusing on education in Ukraine, and by a bridesmaid, Alina Rudya, the Smithsonian Award-winning photographer at whose wedding the couple had first met. Kevan Salisbury, a financial analyst and longtime friend of Ethan Bregman, served as a groomsman. In absentia, the couple was supported by Philip Charles Sternhell, the best man, Anastasiia Masiutkina D'Ambrosio, another bridesmaid, and two more groomsmen, Eric Mattes and Alexander Nyren.
"The warmth and love expressed at this joyous event was amazing," the couple wrote. "The foreigners and Ukrainian guests joined together as one long-lost family. There was not a dry eye during the ceremony where Olha read her vows in English and Ethan read his in Ukrainian."
The couple are currently traveling in Europe and plan to split their time between Kyiv and New York.