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Proposal

Andy’s brother and sister in law ‘to be’ got married on the 25th February 2006 and so Andy had sneakily suggested we celebrate our 5 year anniversary a month late as it would have fallen 2 days before the wedding and he didn’t want any chance of overshadowing the special day for the newly weds.

In the weeks leading up to the day, Andy had fed me a couple of clues to give me what I considered a teaser as to what we would get up to on the day.

The clues were:

• Pack all clothing and accessories suitable for the beach!
• Pack all clothing and accessories suitable for the snow!
• A day prior, my final clue was; pack all clothing and accessories suitable for playing tennis

We love getting outdoors and playing sport hence the nature of the clues and what we would potentially be getting up to. I had no idea what we would be doing – whether we would be going to a favourite holiday spot, going down to the mountain for a ski & snowboard or a combination of both.

I woke up highly anticipating a really exciting day and got myself organised only to find it was horrible weather – torrential rain, the worst day we’d seen in a while.

Andy arrived and made himself quite comfortable on my favourite rocking chair and planted himself in front of the TV looking quite settled for a while, showing no concern for the weather. Completely thrown, I was more confused than ever thinking we mustn’t be going to the beach for the day! We eventually got going and Andy drove north for a good 40 minutes before turning off at the exit for Snow Planet in Silverdale. We spent about an hour and a half having a great time on the slope. One of my most favourite things to do is go skiing so it was a great start to the day. At that stage, I had no idea this was the day I was going to be proposed to.

We hopped back in the car and continued on north, Andy still without a concern for the weather. I was left continually guessing where the heck we were going and tried a number of times to trick him in to spilling the beans, which he refused to do (I’m glad!). We eventually turned off at Warkworth and headed towards Pakiri Beach, which seemed a strange destination considering the weather.

We arrived at the Pakiri Camp ground. Pakiri is a special place for us having spent holidays camping there. At the entrance he got me to close my eyes so that the surprise wouldn’t be spoilt. Andy had previously organised my friend (and lead bridesmaid to be) Jo to beautifully decorate a cabin he’d hired out for the day and prepare an amazing lunch.

As my eyes were closed, my friend Jo drove past us on her way out, me being none the wiser.

Andy came round to my side of the car and opened my door and led me towards the cabin. He let me open my eyes as I stepped out of the car to find a path of red heart confetti lining the way to the door of the cabin. The rain was still heavily falling. As he opened the door, we were both pleasantly surprised with the amazing job Jo had done with beautiful flowers, lovely white linen and wonderful smells coming from the kitchen. We sat down to a sumptuous lunch, which included oven baked Salmon on mesculun with a fruit salsa to start, lamb rack with stuffed field mushroom s a s a main and a beautiful fresh fruit platter and chocolates to finish. I was still oblivious to what was in store. Andy would typically do really special things for me, so this didn’t seem out of the ordinary as such, considering we were celebrating our 5 year anniversary.

Andy suggested (to my surprise) that we go for a walk on the beach and it would be a good idea to get changed into my beach clothes. Thankfully we had our winter jackets with us because it was raining as hard as ever as we set off on our walk.

It wasn’t a regular beach walk – nor was it particularly romantic, as we were both walking with our heads down protecting our eyes from the rain and wind as our legs got sand blasted. We arrived at the rugged Pakiri beachfront. Fortunately we weren’t really as blasted by the sand when we arrived at the beachfront.

Andy stopped me and by this time I really was wondering what the heck was happening. He started to tell me what he loved about me and why he had brought me here. Next thing I know, he is down on one knee, offering me a beautiful ring which he designed and got made for me, telling me he wants to be my best friend forever and asked ‘Will you marry me?’ My response being ‘I’d love to!’

After spending 10 months planning our big day had finally arrived.

Preparation

On the morning of our big day, the girls arrived at my place at 8am. From there we all drove down to the hairdresser where we were getting our hair done. It was a pretty tight schedule with myself, 4 bridesmaids, 2 mothers and a sister-in-law getting their hair done at same place that morning!! My lead bridesmaid was doing make up for us, so she was doing that in amongst the hair and finished it off back at my place.

We arrived home about 11am and started to get dressed. The bridesmaids were wearing a ¾ length, strapless, a-line dress made from apple green dupion silk. They had strappy black heels and wore jewellery made by one of my bridesmaids, Briar.

My dress was from Felicitys Bridal. It was a softly pleated, strapless gown highlighted with delicate swarovski crystals. The gown cut away to show a soft organza overlay. I had this in ‘ivory’ and had a 1.5 metre train. I made my own jewellery with a necklance made from a combination of swarovski crystals and mother of pearl drops and earrings to match. My shoes were also from Felicitys, they were an enclosed toe with a point and a small heel with a strap around the back. I had a fingertip-length veil with the comb highlighted with swarovski crystals.

The boys arrived at Andy’s place in the morning, where they casually went out for a wakeboard to kill some time!! After a fun morning and a nice lunch, they got changed into the ‘London’ suits they had hired from Exclusive Suit Hire. This is a plain black suit with a longer 4-button jacket. They also had waistcoats and wore plain white, French-cuffed shirts. They had matching black silk knots for cufflinks and wore short Euro Ties made by me, my mum and my bridesmaid Charlotte from the same fabric as the bridesmaids dresses.

My flowers were 5 stems of a combination of soft and dusty-pink Gerbera’s, ¾ bound in ivory ribbon, using leather fern, aspidistra leaves, palm and bare grass to compliment the bouquet. The bridesmaids had a similar bouquet, but had 3 stems of soft-pink gerbera’s and were bound in pink organza.

Our florist also made button-holes for all the boys, fathers and grandfather from a single mini-gerbera, dusty pink for Andy to match mine and soft pink for the others. The mothers had a button-hole made from 3 Singaporean orchid buds with asparagus fern and the grandmothers had 2 orchid buds. She also used vases we had bought, 60cm tall torpedo-style, clear glass vases. These contained 3 long-stemmed gerbera’s with bare grass wrapped around and pebbles to line the bottom for us to use at the reception. We also had a single long-stemmed gerbera on every second pew lining the aisle, held to the pew by ivory organza tied in a bow.

Ceremony

Two good friends picked us up in BMW X5’s we had borrowed off friends and drove us to the church, the girls in one and me and mum in another. We arrived at St Aidan’s church in Remuera just after 2pm, Friday 19th January, 2007. This is a big old Anglican church that has been recently renovated. It has high wooden arches, old-style wooden pews and amazing stained glass windows with a capacity of about 350 people.

The bridesmaids walked in, followed by me, with my mum walking me down the aisle to ‘Indelible’ by Brooke Fraser. It was definitely an emotional walk with Andy also quite emotional at the other end. Andy’s dad took the ceremony for us, which was an amazing privilege to have that connection. We had around 250+ friends and family at the ceremony, which was fantastic. Friends of ours played 2 songs during the ceremony and one item during the signing of the register. The ceremony went by, as people had warned us, as a bit of a blur, but was very exciting. Our vows that we spoke reinforced being best friends forever and commitment to each other through every circumstance. One of the highlights was when we were pronounced husband and wife, and told that Andy may kiss the bride and we surprised everyone by first doing a high five! It got a great response.

We walked out, obviously excited and newly-married to ‘Walking on Sunshine’ by KC and the Sunshine Band.

Following the ceremony we had an afternoon tea in the church grounds with drinks and nibbles and had family photos outside the church. This started with us cutting the cake, which was made by a good family friend. She made the three round layers, one of fruit and two of chocolate mud, and had a friend of hers ice the cake and put green organza around the base of each layer to carry the colour theme through. She also hand made three beautiful soft pink gerbera’s for the top of the cake.

After the family photos, the bridal party headed off for the domain. We arrived at the museum where Andy’s brother Brad (a groomsman) had organised some more nibbles for us and we started our formal photos there. We had a number with the pillars of the museum as a backdrop and then moved to the steps for more group shots. When we were there, we had a couple of random people ask if they could join us for a photo! So they casually handed our photographers their little camera and stood between Andy and me for a photo.

We moved down to the grassy area by the big trees for some more photos. Here we had our favourite photo with the girls standing and the boys jumping in unison. We had lots more photos with the bridal party, boys and girls separate and more group shots. We had an amazing time, with the photographers (Third Frame Photography) making the day so much fun and relaxed.

We were very lucky with the weather, as the whole week leading up to the day had been pouring with rain (notice a theme here!!) but it cleared up perfectly for the day.

Our guests headed over to Butterfly Creek for drinks and nibbles prior to us arriving. After having finished out photos at the Domain, we made our way over to Butterfly Creek to join our guests. We were welcomed in by the 150 people we had invited, and went straight into speeches. The speeches were a good combination of story telling and emotional reflection from both mothers, the lead bridesmaid, best man, Andy and me. We opted for a relaxed, more casual style of reception in which we didn’t have a specific seating arrangement. There was a combination of sofas and chairs around for people as well a s a number of large wooden benches on the deck for people to make use of. This was more in line with our style and what we felt comfortable with, as well as allowing us to fit more people in to our venue than if we were to have a full sit down meal.

We had a wonderful buffet dinner and dessert, which people helped themselves to, as the bridal party was served by the waiting staff. More friends arrived at 8.30pm for dessert and a dance. We had our first dance to ‘I’ve had the time of my life’ from Dirty Dancing, after which, the floor was filled with people for the rest of the night. A great night was had by all, this was evident through the jumping off tables and numerous ties wrapped around heads!!

I threw my bouquet just before we left the reception, which was caught by one of my bridesmaids after it rebounded off the wooden beam in the ceiling!! We were fare welled around 11pm by walking through a human archway of all our guests. This was a special way to end such an amazing day!

We had our first night at the Langham Hotel in Auckland City, after which the hotel limo bought us back to our place for an afternoon tea and present opening with immediate family and bridal party. We followed this with a BBQ for friends that had come from overseas. This was a great way to catch up, as it was hard to have a proper conversation on the wedding day, and some had only arrived in the country the morning of the wedding.

On the Sunday morning we headed off for our Honeymoon to the Sunshine Coast, with me not knowing where we were headed until we arrived at customs in Australia! We had a fantastic, sun-filled 10 days there before coming home and setting up our lives as newlyweds in our little house, looking forward to the many adventures ahead!