Pictures: Sacha Kahaki
For the past 11 years, Black Ferns co-captain Kennedy Simon and Super Rugby star Solomone Tukuafu have been virtually inseparable as a couple. Drawn together by their passion for sport, the high-school sweethearts were engaged for three years, but their marriage plan was perpetually on hold.
Until it took them just five days to arrange a top-secret wedding!
The power couple were married on the edge of the tranquil Lake Karāpiro, in an intimate ceremony in front of just two guests – who’d only found out earlier that morning.
Rugby World Cup winner Kennedy wore an elegant ivory gown she’d found just days before tying the knot. Within the wedding bouquet she’d put together was the dried corsage that former Highlanders and Chiefs prop Solly had given her to wear at their high-school ball.
And just four days after their nuptials, Kennedy left her new husband behind. She’s off to lead the Black Ferns on their Northern Hemisphere tour, which will see the team taking on their toughest rivals.
While she knows she will miss him, Kennedy can’t wait to hear commentators announce her new surname to a potential 80,000-strong crowd if coaches select her to run on to the field in one of the world’s largest rugby stadiums, Twickenham, to play England this Saturday.
Mr and Mrs Tukuafu know their bond is strong enough to withstand the tyranny of distance. Especially as their respective professional rugby careers will see them living almost 20,000km apart for the next two years.
It took Solly signing up to play for famous French rugby club Biarritz to speed up their marriage plans.
“When Solly got the opportunity to play in France for two years, we talked about what was going to be hardest for us,” Kennedy, 27, tells Woman’s Day. “And obviously it was the time we’d be away from each other.”
Kennedy is playing in Aotearoa for at least the next four years. She recently extended her contract with New Zealand Rugby through to 2028. It’s the longest commitment ever made by a women’s XVs player.
“It’s a decision I’m really ecstatic about,” she says. “But I can’t just be living my dream. Solly has to live his too.
“The rugby seasons in France are really long and players only get a short break. Solly probably won’t come home while he’s playing there,” she explains. “I had to put a rush on us becoming husband and wife.”
It was a hurry-along that saw them arrange their nuptials in less than a week!
“Nothing like a bit of pressure, right?” laughs Solly. He turns 28 the day the Black Ferns play England’s Red Roses.
The couple had always planned to have a big wedding. Kennedy comes from a large whānau and they’ve both made many friends through sport. But their original plans to marry in 2022 were scuppered when rugby kept pulling them in different directions.
Under urgency this time, Kennedy and Solly chose to have a small, private ceremony in front of the two most influential people in their lives – Kennedy’s grandfather Taku and Solly’s mum Kirsten.
Afterwards, they met with family at a brunch gathering in Cambridge, surprising their loved ones with the exciting news.
On the Wednesday before, Kennedy had phoned the owners of Jakama Lodge, which overlooks Lake Karāpiro. She’d been to fellow Black Fern Chelsea Semple’s wedding there two years earlier and “fell in love” with the venue.
“I asked them for a favour,” smiles Kennedy. “The owner was going to be in Fiji that weekend, but she put an archway on the lawn for us and told us to go for gold!”
In the short run-up to the ceremony, Kennedy found the “perfect” dress at a Hamilton bridal store – a strapless fit-and-flare gown with a train that fit her like a glove – and the couple speedily bought wedding bands from a local jeweller.
Merging something old with something new, Kennedy slipped the high-school corsage she’d kept for a decade into her bridal flowers.
Wanting to surprise her grandfather, she asked him the night before if he would drive her 45-minutes to Karāpiro. He had to promise to “not ask questions” and to bring his best suit.
“Papa and Nan pretty much raised me, so I really wanted to have him there,” says Kennedy, who lost her grandmother Kelly when she was young. “Papa turned up early at 8am, which is great because my family are notoriously late, but he was oblivious to what we were doing.”
However, during the car trip, Taku guessed he was heading to his granddaughter’s wedding and teared up, Kennedy says
When they arrived at the lodge, the bride asked her grandfather to help her into her white dress.
“But for the life of him, he couldn’t get the zip up,” she laughs. “Then I bent over and it went pop! Maybe I was a bit optimistic thinking it fit like a glove. Fortunately, I was wearing a veil, so I was able to hide the broken zip.”
Solly, meanwhile, waited for his bride alongside his proud mum and their wedding celebrant Gareth Duncan, who’d managed Kennedy’s Chiefs Manawa rugby team in the Super Rugby Aupiki competition.
Solly later ribs Kennedy for making him wait six minutes in the warm spring sun – a relief after the thunderstorms of the night before – but he was blown away when he saw his bride and her grandfather walking towards him. He’d insisted on sticking with tradition and not seeing Kennedy’s dress before the ceremony.
“I told Mum, ‘There’s no way I’m going to cry,’ but as soon as I saw her, I couldn’t hold back the tears,” Solly admits. He later adds that emotions also spilled over as the couple read their vows.
Before the ceremony, they placed framed photos of loved ones who couldn’t be there on the day on two chairs facing them. There sat Kennedy’s late grandmother and Solly’s dad, also named Solly, who died three years ago. The couple wanted them there in spirit.
Solly will head to France in the next few weeks to begin the next chapter of his rugby career. Then, Kennedy will join him once the Black Ferns have met arch-rivals England and played in the WXV competition in Canada.
The newlyweds plan to travel through Europe on a delayed honeymoon while Solly has time off. But then Kennedy, who captained Chiefs Manawa last season, needs to be back in New Zealand for the Aupiki season.
“We last spent time apart when I moved to Japan to play, but that was only for five months. We’ve been attached at the hip ever since,” Kennedy says. “So we know this is going to be difficult.”
But as Solly points out, “We both understand our rugby careers aren’t going to last forever. We have to make the most of our opportunities.”
And despite the separation, the couple feel closer than ever.
Solly smiles, “It’s so nice we share the same last name now. We feel more united and I like being able to call her my wife.”
Kennedy adds, “I just love him, so it feels great to have finally sealed the deal. But no matter what, we were always going to be each other’s greatest fan.”
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