Jessica Pegula’s wedding gift: Congratulates Kichenok who postponed wedding for doubles final

Jessica Pegula sends gift to WTA star who postponed her wedding to play in US Open doubles final. Liudmila Kichenok partnered with former French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko to win their first Grand Slam doubles title together.

The Ukrainian revealed during the awards ceremony that she had planned her wedding for Wednesday, September 4, but had to postpone it to play in the tournament’s semifinals against the 10th seeds Chan Hao-ching and Veronika Kudermetova, securing a comfortable victory of 6-1, 6-2.

In the final, they faced the experienced Zhang Shuai and Kristina Mladenovic, defeating them 6-4, 6-3. In her acceptance speech, the 32-year-old player disclosed that she missed her own wedding that week while progressing through the draw: "Also my boyfriend, could be husband actually. Because we were supposed to get married this Wednesday but it didn’t happen!"

"What do you mean could be? It’s still on, right?" asked former world No. 4 Mary Joe Fernandez, who conducted the interviews at the awards ceremony.

"We had actually an appointment to get married this Wednesday but just because I was playing semi-finals."

Kichenok received a standing ovation and was widely praised after the final for her dedication to the tournament. In an Instagram post, the US Open doubles champion shared a photo of the gift she received from Pegula, which appears to be a bottle of champagne: "I saw you were meant to get married on Wednesday! Congrats on a great tournament and enjoy your wedding!" read the note signed by Pegula.