What would prevent two people who love each other from getting married?

Often, in a made-for-TV climax, the question "If there is anyone who objects to this union, please speak now or forever hold your peace" is wrapped up in suspense and intensifies the tension. But that scene unfolds mostly when another unforeseen, fervent romance runs parallel in the storyline.

The hold-up in the case of Iliana Popova and Roumen Zidarov, however, is much more trivial. They were not allowed to marry in Bulgaria, because of what appeared to be a last-minute check by Plovdiv municipality, which discovered that Zidarov had dual citizenship - German and Bulgarian.

Three days before their wedding, scheduled to take place on August 17, they received a municipal phone call explaining that there was "a big problem", Popova told The Sofia Echo.

A voice informed them that, according to the Bulgarian legislation, when a person holds dual citizenship, one of which is Bulgarian, if s/he wants to marry in Bulgaria, s/he has to do so as a Bulgarian citizen and with Bulgaria-issued identification documents. Zidarov did not possess such documents. A lifetime resident of Germany, he had been travelling to Bulgaria as a German citizen for many years. Born in Nigeria to a German mother and a Bulgarian father, neither he, nor his family, ever suspected that, according to the local law, when a child was born to a Bulgarian parent, it automatically assumed the respective citizenship.

However, when Popova filed all the required paperwork with Plovdiv municipality, nobody there checked the status of Zidarov's citizenship. Moreover, there must have been plenty of time afterwards, for a wedding ceremony can be performed no earlier than 30 days from the date of the paperwork submission, Popova said.

"We were in shock," she said, and added that still hopeful, they tried to use the express service for issuance of a lichna karta (Bulgarian ID), but it turned out that they would still not have it in time for the Sunday wedding ceremony.

So, the rest of the "wedding planning" consisted of calling the European Union hotline, because they felt that the state was discriminating against Zidarov's German citizenship. Also, were there no EU regulations to overrule the local legislation, or at least level with it? From Brussels they received a reply via e-mail saying that each member-country was entitled to enforce its existing legislation and no unifying legal regulation applied to the entire union.

In fact, the Bulgarian citizenship agency at the Ministry of Justice told The Sofia Echo that paragraph three of the existing law on citizenship stated that a Bulgarian citizen who also was a citizen of another country was considered to be only a Bulgarian citizen when local legislation was applied, unless another law ruled it out.

None of the institutions or lawyers to which the couple turned for help knew about this paragraph. Instead, they were advised by the municipality to go get married somewhere  else - like Germany or Greece, Popova said. Which, subsequently, they did. Popova said that, finally, they were legally married in Germany and the whole process took four days.

As to their "unfortunate" Bulgarian wedding, Popova joked that at first, they did not know how to break the news to all the relatives in Germany who were ready to fly to Bulgaria. Despite the chaos, the guests came anyway and the couple decided not to cancel their restaurant reception, so the festivities were carried out as planned. Both the groom's and bride's mothers stepped up as pretend state administrators carrying out the wedding ceremony and the whole misunderstanding was made light of, Popova said.

"It all ended well, and that is all that matters now," she said.