STEPANAKERT, NAGORNO-KARABAKH—When Gayaneh and Avanes Grigoryan said “I do,” they were declaring far more than their love for each other.

By taking their vows simultaneously with some 1,300 fellow citizens of Nagorno-Karabakh, they were also making a strong statement of devotion and fidelity to their homeland.

“I’m a great patriot. I adore my homeland,” says Gayaneh, 29, as she flicks through a magazine published to commemorate the day in October 2008. “The worst thing in the world will be if we will be made to leave Karabakh. . . . And having children means that feeling is getting even 100 times more strong.”

Nagorno-Karabakh’s “big wedding” — involving 673 couples — was organized to encourage ethnic Armenians to settle down and multiply in this self-declared but unrecognized republic.

Sandwiched between the former Soviet states of Armenia and Azerbaijan, the de facto autonomous statelet is run by ethnic Armenians, who captured the territory 21 years ago in a war with Azerbaijan.

A shaky ceasefire is in place; clashes are common along the eastern limits of the enclave. Azerbaijan maintains its claim to the mountainous territory, which lies inside its official borders.

The Russian foreign minister said last month that resolving the conflict is a priority for Moscow. On Friday, President Vladimir Putin is to begin a visit to the Azeri capital Baku, where he is expected to discuss the disputed enclave with Azeri President Ilham Aliyev.

Almost seven years after the wedding, Gayaneh, now a mother of two, personifies the enclave’s nation-building strategy.

Sitting in her living room in the capital, Stepanakert, she shows her 5-year-old son, Valerie, the magazine photographs of his parents as bride and groom. She works in a government ministry and is on leave following the birth of Tigran, now 17 months old. Avanes, 30, is too shy to feature in a newspaper, and has disappeared for the afternoon.

“It was magic. . . . Everyone wore the dress she wanted,” Gayaneh reminisces. “All of the wedding dress shops were cleaned out — you had to order months in advance, or go to (Armenian capital) Yerevan. It was the same for hairdressers, nail and beauty salons . . . people were working through the night.”

In the photos, rows of smiling couples are seated at long tables in Stepanakert’s sports stadium, destroyed during the 1991-94 war and rebuilt for the occasion. There are shots of white lace, taffeta and chiffon cascading down the steps into the arena, and of beaming newlyweds posing with Levon Hayrapetyan, the Russia-based Armenian businessman behind the event and other projects aimed at helping the region’s struggling economy.

With monthly salaries then averaging around $50 (U.S.), Hayrapetyan — who is under house arrest in Moscow since last year following allegations of corruption — offered $2,000 (U.S.) to each pair to marry. (The current monthly salary averages $280, according to the enclave’s statistics office.)

Hayrapetyan paid a further $2,000 to each of the 700 couples on the birth of their first child and $3,000 for a second. The scale increases right up to $100,000 for child number seven, and locals say couples who have twins will get an apartment. Those living in rural areas received a cow. The payments are in addition to lower grants from the government, available to everyone, to marry and have children.

Unsurprisingly, Hayrapetyan is possibly the most popular man in the enclave. “I think that Levon is a person who really loves his country,” says Gayaneh. “I don’t know anybody in Karabakh who will say they don’t love him.”

The population has since risen — from 139,000 in 2008 to some 147,000 today — but is still short of its pre-war 200,000.

As a member of the Commonwealth of Unrecognized States, Nagorno-Karabakh shares a bond of mutual recognition with the small club’s three other similarly troubled adherents: South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria. It holds elections and has a national flag, a government with a full complement of ministries, universities and public institutions. It also has a $20-million (U.S.) airport that boasts the latest technology and 120 full-time staff — but sits idle due to threats by Azerbaijan to shoot down aircraft.

“Our primary goal is to be integrated into the civilized and international community,” says de facto president, Bako Sahakyan, in his presidential palace in downtown Stepanakert. “Being unrecognized always forms the basis of our policies.”

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Whether Gayaneh and Avanes would like to continue to have children, and perhaps even hit the $100,000 jackpot, is complicated by the conflict with Azerbaijan.

“This problem is so close to me. My uncle was killed in the war,” she says. “When you have children in such a territory as Karabakh, where you don’t know is it peace or war, you worry for them.

“So my lottery prize is my husband and my family life,” she smiles. “Some people say maybe, in some part of the world, there are places where life is easy and there is no danger of war. It doesn’t matter. The best place to be is Karabakh.”