"It was the best moment of my life so far" - Daria Kasatkina opens up on 'magical' wedding

Weddings have been a hot topic over the last few weeks. With the tennis season extremely packed, there are not many windows of opportunity for people to sit back and relax. For Daria Kasatkina, the time between Wimbledon and the North American hardcourt swing marked the best moments of her life after getting married to former figure skater and longtime girlfriend Natalia Zabiiako.

With the likes of Alex de Minaur, Katie Boulter, Tommy Paul and Liudmila Samsonova all tying the knot in recent times, it was now Kasatkina's turn to get some of the spotlight. In an event attended by fellow WTA players such as Mirra Andreeva, Nadiia Kichenok, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Kamilla Rakhimova, Arina Rodionovam and Yuliia Starodubtseva, the LGBTQ+ wedding was one of love, friendship and freedom.

Now the focus switches back to tennis. Kasatkina is set to compete in the DC Open after qualifying for the WTA 500 event, with the former top 10 talent is starting to get used to this route into tournaments. "Well, I already played qualies in Strasbourg this year; now here in Washington. Honestly, it’s actually feeling like a little bit less pressure, to be honest, because it’s less stakes, let’s say," she told Bounces.

"Plus, you can play more matches, which is good because the US swing is for me a little bit difficult: fast courts, balls are very fast. So for me, it’s a bit difficult to adjust to these conditions. So I think to play additional matches is actually pretty good."

"In my speech during the wedding, I started with the sentence ‘I knew that this day is going to happen from Day One.’" This indicated the love and connection between one another was very strong and it seemingly was always going to have a happy ending.

"Honestly, I didn’t believe in that, but it happened to me. The whole wedding, I mean, I can talk about it for ages, honestly. Mentally, I’m still there. We spent four days in Greece with the friends and family—it was the best four days, it was the best week, and then the best day, particularly: the wedding day. It was the best moment of my life so far. I hope there’s going to be more ‘best days in my life,’ but so far, this is the best day of my life."

She was still somewhat there in her mind as she jogs her memory back to that special day. "Mentally, I’m still there. And whenever I will feel sad or angry or whatever, I will mentally just go back to that day. Me and our friends, we’re still scrolling through the pictures, photos, videos. It was amazing, honestly.

"Also the way everything was organised. The way the puzzle just [got put together] in terms of everything there. Energy-wise, the people, like how it all went: it was magical, honestly. It was so good. It’s tough to get back to reality after this, because it was just too good. It couldn’t be true."

It was a first time to Greece, coincidentally stumbling on some pictures online that sold them the location. "I guess we just saw the Pinterest pictures before, the photos, how beautiful it is" she commented. "We really wanted to do it on the water—on the beach, basically. And you don’t have many places where you can do it. Plus, Greece was logistically the best spot for everyone to come.

"For my parents and friends from Russia, it was more or less convenient: they could get a visa, the travel time was acceptable. It’s just 45 minutes from Istanbul. For other friends around the world, it was fine as well. The weather was very good. Food—we’ve never been there. My mum loves Greece. So we were like, OK, that’s probably the perfect spot: let’s do it there. And it was. It’s a beautiful spot. So we’re like, why not visit the country for the first time, and while we’re there, have a wedding?"

However, not all his family could come with her father suffering a fatal blunder. "When he was applying for a visa, his passport was expiring in less than six months," she laughed. "This says a lot about my dad."

At LGBTQ+ weddings, there less of an emphasis on tradition and sticking with the rules, allowing the wedding planners to have a lot more freedom. In this case, Kasatkina confirmed that there were no traditions for a more personal wedding and celebration.

"First of all, we wanted to make it a party, so it was," she stated. "We didn’t have rules. So our emcee, she was asking like, ‘OK, what do you want me to do? What don’t you want me to do? Tell me the boundaries.’ We said: ‘No boundaries.’ The woman who was doing that, she was exceptional, we loved her."

The wedding was about, in Kasatkina's words, love, friendship and being free. The notorious tradition where you throw a bouquet of flowers was ditched for a more wholesome plan. "We said ‘No, we’re not going to do it, because you are not going to compete for happiness. Each of you deserve it equally.’ So we just gave everyone a small flower from the [bouquet]. Because we really didn’t like the idea of this tradition, because honestly, I think that it’s stupid.

"I mean, all the wedding was about love, friendship, and just like, being free—wild and free. We were just having fun as much as we could, and I think that was magical. We didn’t want to make it a very classic, traditional wedding. We wanted to do the complete opposite to that."

It was a very close-knit group of people with 40 making the trip to Greece. "We made it very custom, let’s say. And yeah, that was the best thing ever," the 29-year-old said.

Feeling that they may get some criticism from the wedding, Kasatkina was preparing to ignore it, enjoying doing what she wanted. "I would say we knew that we’re still going to get some hate, but our skin got so thick that we didn’t give a s**t anymore. We could do whatever we want and we didn’t care about the outcome of some people being [unaccepting of] what we were doing. So we really didn’t think about it.

"I think this is the best thing. I mean, I think this is what freedom is about: you can do whatever you want without thinking about what others will think. And that’s beautiful, honestly. Also, what we didn’t want to do was to make the wedding secret. And I think, honestly, the outcome was so good. We really liked it."

Formerly representing Russia, Kasatkina switched allegiances to Australia at the start of 2025. Part of this was down to safety concerns over strict anti-LGBTQ+ laws in Russia. Since then, she has started to settle down in a new environment. "I think I’m finally mentally settling down," she admitted. "Because I was trying to play cool, but [laughs] I wasn’t very cool. To be honest, it was difficult. The transition was tough. I was trying not to show it, but I was struggling. Not ‘struggling,’ but I had to change a lot of things."

She admits that she has finally 'finding peace.' "Still, you cannot just feel comfortable like this [snaps], you know, changing a huge part of yourself. You need time to adjust. And even if nothing is changed, there’s something which changed in you. I was processing this for about a year, and I’m finally feeling that I’m finding peace, you know."

With her tennis career priority, she was not able to do a lot of stuff she would have wanted with friends and family, missing out on so many special occasions. "The whole year before, I didn’t have this feeling at all. I felt like a hamster in the wheel, all the time. And now, finally, I know better how to manage my time off court. Maybe I actually don’t have to invest as much in tennis, but [instead] maybe the life of the outside of the tennis court, which is, at the end, more important.

"I know that tennis is a huge part of our lives—and mine as well. And I sacrificed so much for tennis. Sometimes, I have to actually also sacrifice tennis for another very important thing in my life."

At the wedding, it was a chance for her to apologise on this very special occasion. "As I said to everyone at the wedding: this whole thing, the whole trip, is my huge apologies to my family and friends for not being enough in their lives. Yeah, that is my payoff. Because I understand that I gave everything [to tennis], and it was very egoistic. Because everything I was doing was for myself, you know?

"I feel like I missed so many things. I missed everything. You know how players go home for Christmas? For us in Russia, New Year’s is actually the big celebration. Which is always when we are already starting in Australia. I didn’t have the opportunity to be there for the New Year’s. I’m not even talking about birthdays, weddings, kids—whatever. I was never there. So I appreciate my friends, but I’m trying to fix it. They never told me that, but I know what they think sometimes."