With love for the Motherland and ancestors: participants in the III All-Russian Wedding Festival spoke about their roots

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The III All-Russian Wedding Festival "Russia. Uniting Hearts" will bring together couples in love from across the country on 8 and 9 July. Ahead of the large-scale simultaneous wedding ceremony, which will be held at the National Centre RUSSIA on Family, Love and Fidelity Day, the future newlyweds spoke about how they honour the history of their families and inherit the traditions of their ancestors. For these couples, love has become a symbol of unity not only between two people, but also between all previous and future generations.

More than 100 couples have already joined the festival, including Anton Rusmilenko and Viktoria Yurko from the city of Salekhard in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area. The couple in love is one of the remarkable examples of how different cultures can be woven into a single whole. Anton is a representative of the Khanty indigenous minority people, while Viktoria grew up in a Russian family. In the groom’s family, annual gatherings around a large table hold a special place: this is a time of connection between generations, when elders share the wisdom of the family line. In the bride’s family, people value creating comfort with their own hands, whether through preparing a festive dinner together or family crafts that Viktoria learned from the women of her family line. In 2022, Anton began compiling his family tree. Thanks to painstaking work with archives and relatives’ memories, a large-scale map of the lives of 175 people was created.

"We treat the legacy of both family lines with great warmth and respect, because Khanty and Russian cultures are both based on the main values: a strong family and a deep connection with nature. In our future family, the traditions of our ancestors will not simply be preserved, but will take on a new sound, enriching our life together," Viktoria and Anton shared.

Ksenia Vyarya from the Republic of Karelia, the bride of Alexander Kashirin, has studied her family tree in detail. The threads of her family history stretch from the north, from remote Karelian villages, from the forests of Tver and Finnish farmsteads. Ksenia has two maternal great-aunts who are true keepers of the family memory. Thanks to their stories, old photographs and documents, she has reconstructed the family tree across four to five generations and will continue this work. The future spouses Ksenia and Alexander believe that, as they become a couple, their histories take root in one another, and that a family is like a large library.

"It contains volumes written by different authors, in different genres. Parents are encyclopaedias and novels with notes in the margins. Children are blank pages or collections of poems being written right now. It is important not to demand that everyone be one book. It is important to take care of each one: not to bend the spine, not to tear out inconvenient pages, to give it time to settle. In such a library, everyone who enters knows that their text is valuable, even if it has not yet been finished," Ksenia and Alexander noted.

Another couple, Nikolai and Maria Zykov from Moscow, are also collecting information about their ancestors for themselves and future generations. They began drawing a family tree so as not to lose touch with their roots and to understand their belonging to their family line.

Mikhail Ekkemeyev and Anastasia Grebennikova from the Ryazan Region are also proud of their ancestors and honour their foundations. The bride comes from a Russian family, and for her, traditions mean bread, salt, sincerity and respect for elders. The groom has Chuvash roots; his family preserves the melodies of their ancestors and passes down respect for work and purity of soul from generation to generation.

"We both grew up in a culture where family ties are sacred, where a wedding is not just a celebration, but a profound rite that unites generations. The fact that 2026 has been declared the Year of Unity of the Peoples of Russia gives our marriage special meaning. We want our love to become a small but bright part of the mosaic of the peoples of Russia," Mikhail and Anastasia said.

Yaroslav Rudenko and Alena Syrkova, who live in Moscow, will say "I do!" to each other at the festival on Family, Love and Fidelity Day. The groom is from the city of Meleuz in the Republic of Bashkortostan, while the bride is from the Arkhangelsk Region. "We have united Bashkir and Pomor cultures. Together, we bake kalitki and gubadiya, cook beshbarmak and Pomor-style fish soup, and honour Sabantuy and the Pomor 'pomoga', mutual assistance," the couple said.

Among the couples in love who will marry at the festival are also bearers of family professional traditions, including Vladislav Cherepanov and Karina Kazakova from Altai Territory. The couple have known each other since the age of 14. The groom is now chief engineer of an agricultural complex and the third representative of a farming generation. The Cherepanov working dynasty began with his grandfather, who created a farm and put his soul and experience into it. His father continued the work, and Vladislav now looks up to him. The bride works for the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Since childhood, she had dreamed of this profession.

"My father works around the clock, develops the farm and takes care of the land and animals. My father’s and grandfather’s dedication to their work, perseverance and wisdom have become the main example for me. I am the third in my family line to devote my life to farming, continuing the family history, and Karina is proud of me and inspires me," Vladislav shared.

This year, the All-Russian Wedding Festival is expanding its horizons. International and foreign couples will say "I do!" to each other at the National Centre RUSSIA together with couples in love from across the country.

The main event of the first day, 8 July, will be the simultaneous wedding ceremony for couples in love from across the country. The celebration will be adorned by the passing of the flame of the All-Russian Family Hearth "Heart of Russia". The newlyweds will receive a particle of the flame from Murom, where the patron saints of marriage, Peter and Fevronia, lived, from couples who married at previous festivals.

On the second day, 9 July, educational lectures, gastronomic and musical programmes, as well as tours of the National Centre RUSSIA expositions "Journey Across Russia" and "Geography Lessons", will be held for the newlyweds, their guests and anyone wishing to join the celebration of love. Everyone who shares family values and is interested in wedding traditions can register to take part in the educational part of the wedding festival on the website of the National Centre RUSSIA. One of the key events of the second day will be the parable "Khorovod. Wedding", a symbol of unity, strong bonds and readiness to extend a hand to one’s neighbour. This dance, loved by Russians, will unite all participants in the event.

The III All-Russian Wedding Festival is organised by the National Centre RUSSIA jointly with the Moscow Government and the Moscow Civil Registry Office. In the Year of Unity of the Peoples of Russia, declared by President Vladimir Putin, the main theme of the festival is "United in Love": the unity of hearts, culture, traditions and values.

The I All-Russian Wedding Festival was held in 2024 as part of the International RUSSIA EXPO. At the festival, 221 couples entered into family unions. In 2025, the event was held at the National Centre RUSSIA, where another 206 families were created. The event has become annual and will be held on the holiday of Saints Peter and Fevronia.