During her emotional farewell speech when Dame Jacinda Ardern resigned as prime minister almost a year ago, she included a special shout-out to her fiancé Clarke Gayford: “Let’s finally get married!”
And as Woman’s Day went to print, it was widely reported the pair were set to do exactly that, on Saturday 13 January, at the exclusive Craggy Range Winery in Havelock North, with Jacinda hosting a hens do at Hastings Distillers a few days before.
Craggy Range Winery was named “World’s Most Instagrammable Vineyard” in 2021.
In a twist, Jacinda’s friend and former colleague, Labour Party MP Kieran McAnulty, was also scheduled to marry his fiancée Gia Carrick – a former press secretary to both Jacinda and successor Chris Hipkins – on the same date in the Coromandel, which meant their many mutual mates, including Chris and Jacinda’s deputy Grant Robertson, had to make an awkward decision over which wedding to attend.
Now parents to five-year-old daughter Neve, Jacinda, 43, and Clarke, 47, got engaged at Easter in 2019, when the Fish Of The Day presenter proposed during a break at his family bach near Gisborne. They were set to marry in January 2022, but the arrival of the Omicron variant of COVID scuttled their plans. “Such is life,” the politician said of their decision to postpone the nuptials. “I am no different to, dare I say, thousands of other New Zealanders.”
Neve’s the perfect age to be Mum’s flower girl!
Early last year, Jacinda told The Australian Women’s Weekly that she and Clarke were still working on a plan to reschedule their big day, saying, “Because we have a house, a child and a life, it’s been hard to find the time to plan the wedding, but it will be a wonderful thing when we get to do it. We just want to be focused on it when we do.”
