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A date with destiny

For Motueka couple Dave and Jane Hender, a good thing took time.
Motueka couple Dave and Jane Hender

The couple’s wedding day at Abel Tasman National Park – 60 years to the day after they first met.

Dave and Jane Hender were five years old and about to start primary school when they first set eyes on each other – and liked what they saw.

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Inseparable until their mid-teens, the two best friends gradually drifted apart, married young and each had a couple of kids. Not a single moment of passion or a romantic word had passed between them, but when Jane heard through the grapevine that Dave’s marriage was on the rocks, she sent a poem asking him to take her back into his life.

By then, it had been almost three decades since they’d lost contact. It took two more years of gentle courtship before they officially became a couple, then another 20 years before Dave finally convinced her to say, “I do.” But on April 23, 2014 – the 60th anniversary of the day they met – they finally made it to the “altar”.

“Dave had asked me a hundred times and I kept saying no, because I’d had such a bad experience,” says Jane, who was 21 when she married her first husband and knew within two weeks of her wedding to him that she’d made a mistake. “Dave and I had both been betrayed by other people. But we’d never do that to each other. Never. We’re absolutely true soul mates.”

After a simple ceremony on the sand in Abel Tasman National Park, they sat among the driftwood drinking bubbly as sunlight sparkled across the bay. The bride wore a bright-pink top and a sarong; the groom wore bare feet. Not only was it a day to remember, it was also the 20th wedding anniversary of their celebrant Terri Everett, a boutique event planner in Kaiteriteri who calls herself “The Dream Maker”. She married the couple six days after they cycled up her driveway and knocked at the door.

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Originally from the UK, the Henders spent 12 years sailing around the Atlantic before falling in love with New Zealand during a three-month holiday here. Now permanent residents, they live in Motueka, but spend much of their time off adventuring in an old ambulance they’ve converted into a campervan.

Dave and Jane Hender, best friends through school from the age of five.

Dave, who was 22 and “impregnated with rampant hormones” when he wed his first wife, admits he and Jane sometimes wonder what life might have been like if they’d hooked up as teenagers. “Obviously there’s a chance if we’d stayed together from childhood, we might be clawing each other’s eyes out by now,” he laughs.

But despite spending so long apart, Jane says she always knew they’d find they way back to each other. “Now we’re making up for lost time.”

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Words by: Joanna Wane

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