Featured Wedding

Jacob and I first met back in 2010 through my cousin. We were fairly young when we first got together and in turn, we had a brief period when we separated. After a year of having some time apart, we started seeing each other again and then Jacob proposed to me on Christmas Day, 2018.

We had travelled down to Tairua in the Coromandel, where my family has a bach. Before going to see my family, Jacob took me up Mt Paku where he got on one knee and asked me to marry him. What I hadn’t realised, is he had earlier asked my dad for permission and had arranged for some champagne.

When we visited Markovina we instantly fell in love with the venue. The main things that really sold us was the all-inclusive package (venue, menu, bar and staff), and the several wedding ceremony options including a beautiful indoor option, which we ended up using due to the weather. We went for a more rustic/classic themed wedding, but not too over the top as we both liked a simple and clean style.

My floral dreams came true with Sarah from Print and Petal. She has a skill of giving you exactly what you want and keeping to your budget. I have known Sarah for a while as we went to school together but that had no sway in why we chose to use her. We used Print and Petal purely because of Sarah’s unique style and ability to bring our vision to life.

As soon as we got engaged, I knew I wanted to use Skye Carter Photography to capture our special day.  Skye had photographed a friend’s wedding and we fell in love with her photography style. The way she was to capture those intimate candid moments is incredible. We also had Scott and Hayley from Wild Souls, who are absolutely amazing videographers! They documented our day so beautifully and had me in tears watching our wedding film. They are extremely professional, friendly and laid back. Their passion for videography and weddings is evident in everything they do.

We chose Hayley Maree as our marriage celebrant and she was also my hair and make-up artist. Hayley has such a wonderful and bubbly personality that made our whole planning process so easy. She really went above and beyond for us and was a calming presence on our wedding day.

The most memorable part of our wedding was the ceremony, as we had included some family members’ as part of our celebration. The ceremony is why we all get married, to commit to each other in front our family and friends, so to be able to include them in something so special, was amazing. We were very fortunate to have our wedding ceremony before the lockdown.

For the reception we decided to go for the buffet style menu. This was mainly because we both love food and wanting to make sure everyone was well fed. The food that Markovina served was delicious.

The people we had involved in our day definitely a major part of why our day was so special. From family and friends, to all our wonderful vendors especially the staff at Markovina. We got married the Friday before New Zealand went into lock down, so we had a rather stressful lead into our day but Mark and Vini reassured us that everything would go ahead as planned. It also rained on our wedding day, and they just seamlessly transferred our ceremony to the indoor site and it was so beautiful. The weather or the lockdown couldn’t spoil our wedding.