Guests at this Auckland couple’s engagement party were shocked to hear it was cancelled – but there was a bigger surprise in store.
It was the last thing the engagement party guests expected to hear. A complete stranger stood in front of Carly Jones and Clint Lloyd’s families and friends and announced the engagement party was cancelled. But there was a twist.
The reason the engagement celebration was off was because it had become a wedding. And the stranger was the celebrant who was to marry Carly and Clint just minutes later.
“They were completely taken by surprise,” laughs Carly. “Someone even burst into tears. But when he told them it was our wedding ceremony, they went from stunned to smiling pretty quickly.”
Amazingly, car salesman Clint (32) and student Carly (23) had only started planning the wedding a week before.
“oy best friend and my mother were the only ones who knew,” says Carly. “I needed them to help me with the preparations, but they were sworn to secrecy.”
The couple’s original wedding date was set for 2007 and was to be in Rarotonga. “We had paid the deposit, but as time went on, we realised many of the people we cared about weren’t going to be able to make it to Rarotonga,” says Carly.
“We felt we couldn’t have such a special day without them so I asked Clint if we could get married at our engagement party. It took him about an hour to think about the idea, but then we decided to go for it.
“It was hard to keep it a secret though. We asked the florist to make some posies and three big bunches of flowers, and she gave us a funny look. She didn’t know why I needed so many flowers at my engagement party.”
The celebrant was booked and let in on the secret. Then Carly had to beg the cake company to make her cake at short notice.
“The problem was we’d decided on Waitangi weekend so it was a big ask for the bakers to make the cake we wanted the next week,” she explains. “But they worked it out for us.”
If any of the 100 guests were wondering why the tables were decorated, they didn’t let on. “They thought we were splashing out on our engagement,” says Carly. “We thought it was only fair to tell the truth to our closest family members shortly before the ceremony.
Clint’s mum was in shock. She said, “Look what I’m wearing. I haven’t got a new outfit yet!”
The couple bent other rules too, such as the tradition of the bride wearing white. “I wore a beautiful strapless red dress. We had already broken with tradition anyway,” laughs Carly. “It was stressful at times because there was only a week to get everything together, but it was perfect in the end.” Writer: oere oulu
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