The happy couple on their wedding day, on the terrace of Otto Mezzo with the Shanghai skyline in the background. provided to Shanghai star

It took mutual friends in Shanghai to bring these two Russians together. Wang Ying tells us how it happened.

Russian woman Julia Fatykhova never imagined the guy she opened the door for at one of her friends’ house warming parties would be her future husband.

Both Fatykhova and Nikolay Komarov came from Russia, but it was in Shanghai that they met each other, fell in love and got married.

“We decide to live in this romantic city longer,” they said.

Their love story started at the end of the summer of 2012, when both of them were invited to a house warming party on October 6.

“It’s no secret that the expat community in Shanghai is very tight. Almost everyone knows one another, and even if you don’t know someone personally, it’s guaranteed that you have mutual friends. That’s exactly how we met,” said Komarov, a 30-year-old lead designer at a global executive search firm.

Before meeting Fatykhova, Komarv kept on hearing from his friend about a Russian girl who was awesome and would be a perfect fit for him, he recalled.

Similarly, Fatykhova also heard a lot from a girl friend about a nice single guy, who was “my type”.

“I didn’t take it seriously until I opened the door on him at the party,” said Fatykhova.