Among over 45,000 Russian nationals residing in the United Kingdom, there is a large number of people who came and stayed on marriage visas. Of course, the vast majority of them are women.
Russian mail-order brides are still a thing, and British men can still legally marry them. How to do it, how much that will cost, and is it even worth the effort? You’ll find all the answers here.
Now, the mail-order bride business exists only online—the times of land-based dating agencies are long gone. Still, not every dating site with Russian women for dating and marriage is worth using. Our experts have chosen the three best legal platforms where a British man has a real chance of finding a Russian girlfriend, namely:
Meet European brides: This platform is your gateway to meeting charming European brides who are not only beautiful but also intelligent, cultured, and ready to build a loving relationship.
Each platform has an interesting set of features and a quite specific target audience. If you want to find out which will be the best option for you, learn more about the sites and their policies and then make your choice.
It’s been a long time since the collapse of the USSR when Russian women flooded Western Europe and the United States mostly because they finally got an opportunity to see something new. Today, the priorities have changed, and you’ll hardly attract a local woman just by the fact that you’re British or make more than an average Russian man.
Modern Russian mail-order brides are looking for decent husbands. They join online dating sites to build emotional connections with the right men at a distance first, then meet them in real life, and if they see the chance of starting a healthy family is real, migrate to a future husband’s country. Their motivation is usually explained by a strong desire to get married, problems with local men, and social problems negatively affecting the institution of the family at large.
What else should you know about modern Russian brides and Russian society? Take a look at some key figures:
Basically, gender imbalance, problems with the institution of the family, high alcohol abuse rates among men, as well as high domestic violence rates, explain why many Russian women are searching for husbands in foreign countries, including the United Kingdom.
Yes. Despite sanctions, Russian women still can apply for foreign partner visas to the United Kingdom. If a couple provides all the necessary documents and proves that they have a genuine relationship, the bride will be able to move in with her British partner and marry him within six months.
We’d like to stress that catalogs with Russian wives for sale just don’t exist. The ones you can find on Google search results are scam sites. The only way to find a mail-order wife is to search for a single Russian woman online (most often, men choose niche sites), meet her in real life, get her a visa, and then get married.
Of course, that means that every British man looking for a Russian bride will need to use a wide range of services. That’s why it’s hard to calculate the average cost—too much will depend on personal choices. Still, if we imagine a perfect scenario, we can calculate the minimum cost of finding a future spouse in Russia.
Cost of using one of the top dating sites with Russian girls for marriage (6 months) – £600
Round-trip flight (from London to Astana, Kazakhstan) – £300
A three-week stay in Kazakhstan – £400
Foreign partner visa – £1,800
Spending on romance (gifts, small dinner wedding for two) – £1,000
Total – £4,100
*Note that we provided the costs of visiting Kazakhstan because visiting Russia in 2024 is not safe. We chose it as one of the most affordable travel destinations both for you and for your potential Russian wife, but you can also consider other options like Georgia, Azerbaijan, Latvia, etc.
The cost can really be this low, but again, a lot will depend on you. What should you consider to plan your budget correctly? We explain how to estimate expenses and where the above-listed prices come from below.
Niche dating platforms are the best for meeting real marriage-minded Russian brides. Dating sites, along with their pricing policies, can be different, but there’s at least one thing that all top platforms have in common. They all use credit systems instead of offering premium plans, which makes it more difficult to calculate the total cost of online dating services.
The thing is that the user decides how many credits (the virtual currency that’s used to charge members for using special features) to spend, how often to do it, how many women to contact, and which communication tools to use.
It seems complex, but if we consider the pricing policies of top sites, in particular, the sites that we’ve mentioned previously, we’ll see that the costs of using premium features are more or less similar. Yes, the costs of credits may range from around £0.20 for 100 credits to around £2 for 20 credits, but considering the costs of features, a member can expect to spend around £100 per month on each site.
It takes around six months for most men to find a Russian woman and start a relationship with her, so the total cost will be around £600. Again, it depends on multiple factors, so try to learn as much as possible about the system of the site you’re going to use and develop the most effective strategy to cut costs.
Things don’t get simpler when it comes to offline meetings. The thing is you should not go to Russia because of war, sanctions, and a bad political situation, but you can go to countries Russia borders with. It must also be more or less easy for a Russian woman to go there, so Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia are currently the top options.
As we’ve mentioned previously, three weeks in Kazakhstan will cost you just around £400. The prices are not much higher in Azerbaijan, so you can also expect to spend around £400, while in Georgia you are likely to spend around £600.
Note these are prices for mid-range travelers. If you prefer high-end vacations, you can spend 10 times more money on hotels, meals, local transportation, and entertainment.
If you decide to propose to your Russian girlfriend, you can legally marry her in the UK, but she’ll need a visa to enter the country and stay. It will cost £1,800. It can get £800 cheaper for those who are applying for a visa from the UK, but it’s rarely the case.
Here, everything will depend on you. There’s no need to shower Russian women for marriage with gifts and flowers. But most men still spend money on nice gestures and surprises, so consider your dating style and then plan your budget.
As for the wedding, you can spend just £500 on decent outfits and a dinner for two or £20,000 or more on a big celebration. Again, it’s totally up to you.
I’ve been to Russia once, and I hadn’t seen so many beautiful women ever before in my life. That was over 15 years ago so I came back to Bristol, married a local girl, and nearly forgot about this experience. We divorced after 10 years of marriage, and that was a disaster.
So I thought, why not meet someone attractive, family-oriented, and caring? Men have been doing that for centuries! So, that’s what I did, and though I didn’t expect much, it worked. I’m writing this after me and Katya celebrated our first wedding anniversary. All my fears faded away when I first met her. I listened to my heart, and that paid off. Couldn’t be happier.
You can find a single girl from Russia rather easily just by joining one of the niche sites with Slavic or European brides. There’s a good chance that you’ll find a girlfriend soon and that you’ll build that happy relationship. But what about pitfalls? You should consider them, too, to develop realistic expectations, so we list some of the difficulties you are likely to face below:
Should you search for a Russian mail-order bride? If you like Russian women, if your motivation to get married and start a family is strong enough, and if you are ready to do research and develop a good strategy that would work for you personally, you can find happiness in this faraway country.
