Hlukhiv Mayor Michel Terestchenko has decided to get married. Owing to his innate modesty, the descendant of a famous aristocratic family did not want to draw the media’s attention to this very personal event. Therefore, this article can in fact be called an exclusive positive sensation.
Michel’s chosen one is Olena YESKINA, public activist, head of the NGO “Kyivites for Kyivites,” ex-member of the Kyiv City Council. The wedding ceremony will be held at St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral in Kyiv.
“St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral was built by my ancestors. And I am not the first representative of the Tereshchenko family line, who is to receive a blessing in this temple. It is normal for us,” Terestchenko told The Day.
For Olena, too, the temple is a special place. “My father, who departed this life very early, had been baptized at St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral.”
The couple will arrange the wedding party by themselves. They say there was no need to turn to professional consultants and assistants for help, for they did not plan a noisy celebration.
For Michel and Olena, a church wedding ceremony is, above all, a special spiritual event. This is why they are not planning a large-scale extravaganza and are inviting the closest and the dearest only.
“Naturally, we would like to gather all of my and Michel’s friends and acquaintances, but not in this place and at this time,” Olena explains. So there would be a church ceremony followed by a “supper for close friends.”
Olena told The Day that she at first wanted just to get the marriage registered – without any ceremonies, formal clothes, and publicity. But then she confessed that her relatives and husband-to-be had convinced her that it was necessary.
The bride will be wearing a white dress in the classical European style. “I’ve bought a ready-made one. Frankly speaking, I did not attach much importance to the dress,” Olena says. “I have so much work to do, and I had no time to commission a Ukrainian or any other designer to custom-make a dress.”
The wedding couple do not want to discuss the sacred moment of a declaration of love. They wish it to remain in a very secret archive of family reminiscences, “It is very personal. And I wouldn’t like to [talk about this],” Olena said. But the bride willingly tells me about meeting her future husband. She says it happened after the Maidan here in Kyiv.
“We felt immediately that we were very close in spirit. So our friendship and public activism gradually and smoothly grew into a closer relationship,” Olena says. She confesses that the first thing her future husband attracted her with was “what he is doing for the country and society.”
“Michel is a very charismatic person who deserves great respect because of what kind of a person he is and what he is doing. I have never been interested in the men who live for themselves only,” Olena says.
Besides, in the bride’s words, the Tereshchenkos’ descendant is a very radiant and positive person as well as a very tactful man. Asked by The Day about the wedding details, dates and relationships with Olena, he told us to phone her. “I would very much like you to talk with Olena about this. It is a very delicate subject for a woman. I don’t want to make public something that Olena wouldn’t perhaps like to be discussed,” Michel explained apologetically.
Another interesting touch to the romantic portrait of a new family: greeting Ukrainians with the 25th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence, Michel placed Olena’s photo under the post “My Ukraine is 25 today” on his Facebook page. One of the Web users commented: “Who is on the photo?! Is it Ukraine?” To which Michel said briefly but meaningfully: “Yes...”
The Day’s staff is sending greetings to the wedding couple on this very important occasion. We wish them long years of love and marital bliss.
