Real Weddings

Article by

Dani Connor

Posted on

05/10/2023

Posted in

Real Weddings

Jen and Matt met when he travelled from New Zealand to the US on a soccer scholarship. Jen, who is from the States, was at the same college playing softball, and a little bit of bad luck saw them spending a whole lotta time together. “He broke his leg. A couple of weeks after that, I tore my ACL and we ended up becoming best friends as we spent a lot of time together doing rehab,” Jen says. “Eventually, we realised this was more than just a friendship and took our relationship to the next level. I moved to New Zealand to be with him in 2017 and have been there since!”

Their wedding day was one for the ages, and the talented Nicole Gourley was on hand to capture all the magic.

THE THEME “The vibe we wanted was a unique, laid-back, mini festival. We are known to love fast food so wanted to incorporate tacos, pizzas and burgers for the food. We also had personalised cocktails (Jen’s Main Squeeze Margarita and Matt’s Mint to Be Mojito) which were a huge hit at the bar!”

THE VENUE “When we visited The Boneline, we loved it straightaway as it had a unique feel and wasn’t necessarily known as a ‘wedding venue’. We loved that we had creative freedom to make all the decisions on our own and were not required to use specific vendors like a lot of venues. The Boneline were so accommodating and helpful and any ideas or questions we had were quickly answered. As soon as we left after our first visit, we knew it was the one.”

CUTE CUSTOM “We did a little ceremony called ‘tying the knot’ and I had my mum bring up an American flag ribbon, Matt’s mum brought up a New Zealand ribbon and our good friend, Hayden, brought up a black ribbon which was representative of our fur baby, Sally – a little black cat. Our celebrant then explained the meaning between each ribbon and that we were unified together and each time we add a family member (babies, fur babies, etc), we add another ribbon to our knot. It was quite a cool way to honour my American background and Matt’s Kiwi roots while also including Sally.”

DIY “We prepared our own confetti for walking back down the aisle after getting married. It was a fun little project that we started about a year out from our wedding date. We would walk down to the local park and find leaves and then take them home and hole punch hearts into them. It was definitely time consuming but never stressful as we started so far out and would just chip away at it when we had some down time.”

STANDOUT VENDORS “All of our vendors were incredible and so helpful leading up and on our big day. Our photographer, Nicole Gourley gave us over 50 photos the next day as a sneak peak, which was so exciting to share with friends and family at our barbecue the day after the wedding! Nicole also drove us to our Airbnb for my dress change and a few additional photos as Matt and I had both had a few drinks, we really appreciated that! Rod from who was in charge of our food, bar and the tipis also went all out for our day. Everyone loved the food, the bartenders were such a good time and there were no issues with the tipis even with the strong wind we had on the day!”