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Anthony and I knew as soon as we met each other that we had ticked every box. We had impeccably bad timing though, with ‘Darkey’ due to leave on his big OE to the UK three months later. This initially put a bit of a cloud over our chance meeting, however plans were changed and the OE only lasted 3 weeks, with an engagement ring being the end result.

We decided to get married at the Chateau underneath Mt Ruapehu. It was somewhere in the middle for our two families and the mountain was a place where we both really enjoyed spending the winters. The other great thing about the hotel was that all of our guests could stay there, and seeing as we booked the whole place we could party as long as we liked.

After deciding on the guest list (horrible job– ended up just inviting everyone!)The biggest decision was choosing our colours. I decided to find the bridesmaid’s dresses first and go from there. I wanted something pretty and fun, but also a bit stylish. Finally we found ‘avocado’ dresses with a pink ribbon around the waist. So we had our colours, and from there everything came fairly easily.

Mum and I designed all of our stationary from the invites, notes in each hotel room, menus, to table names and so on. My uncle works for a printer business and gave us a huge hand in the cutting, hole punching, assembling etc... This actually turned out to be a fairly big job!

My dress came next which I found at Brides of Hastings. A girl who looked about a size 6 or 8 came in and put it on. She looked stunning but I thought it was because she was so little. My bridesmaid encouraged me to put the dress on anyway and I loved it. It was a bit different and a bit original which was important to me.

One of the best things about our wedding was involving our family and friends in the day. We already had my Uncle Lou involved with the stationary, and went about enlisting my cousins Rebecca (professional photographer), Josh (hairdresser) and Hamish (videographer) and also a family friend Ruth as our florist. It made all the organising so much more fun having these guys involved.

We were warned that snow was on the forecast (snow in April?!) and this got me really excited. During our rehearsal Anthony and I were standing up in front of the main window looking over Ngarahoe and it started snowing! Unfortunately the next day there was no snow, just cold! However the open fires made the venue a very cosy place to be on a winter’s night.

The whole night was so much fun. A lot of people had said to me that I probably wouldn’t remember it very well because of the nerves etc but I remember walking down the isle vividly, I had this massive shaky grin on my face and was clutching onto dad for dear life. And seeing Darkey’s face when I got there was great, he grabbed my hand and whispered ‘Your Hot!!’

We had over 170 guests so it was important to us to get everyone chatting and mingling. While we were outside having our photos taken each guest got a little card with the name of another guest on it. They had to find this person and tell them where they were sitting. This was a great idea and got everyone mixing.

Our music was definitely a highlight. We had Jade Pritchard play who was brilliant. He played all our songs during our ceremony, then Bon Jovi for our first dance and rocked on to the Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin and U2. All of the ‘oldies’ loved him, some of who well outlasted us ‘kids’ not getting to sleep until after 5 in the morning…

We couldn’t have got a better venue. The staff at the Chateau were brilliant, ensuring everything ran smoothly and the food was just amazing. Also the fact that people could just crawl upstairs to bed when they had had enough made sure our day lasted well into the next morning.

If we had a chance to change a thing I’m really not sure what it would be. Everything was so much fun, all of our guests had a great time, the food was excellent, the speeches went down well…we reckon it was perfect!!