A Backyard Garden Wedding with Māori Traditions

You planned a wedding from a different country, what were the challenges you faced while doing that?

The biggest challenge was trying to organize and coordinate everything from Australia. We were incredibly lucky to have Verity’s parents based in NZ which helped to have someone on the ground. We were also incredibly lucky for the generosity of friends who offered their home for our international guests to stay in for the week around the wedding.

Finding and communicating with vendors who were LGBTIQA+ supportive and navigating the time difference. However, we found some incredible people who helped make our day so special.

Why did you decide to have a garden wedding in the backyard?

We got married in Verity’s parents’ back garden. It was an easy choice as they live on a stunning rural property in Arrowtown, New Zealand. The setting was perfect for our small intimate family wedding, and it meant we could do almost all the set up ourselves. 

Talk to us about finding your wedding photographer.

Our best advice is to not  limit yourself to just looking at wedding photographers. We chose Ryan because of his landscape photography and incredible gallery website. It just so happened that he also did wedding photography which was just as incredible! 

We wanted someone who would make us feel comfortable, and not too posed and unnatural. We felt like Ryan was able to give us some direction, but also captured authentic moments between us. Those are our favorite photos.

You incorporated some wedding traditions, and Māori traditions,  into your wedding day, how did you approach these as a lesbian couple?

The Karanga, a part of Māori culture, meant that Verity and her family were standing on their land and the rest of the wedding party and guests were called onto the land and welcomed.
A Karanga forms part of a traditional Māori welcoming ceremony and is almost exclusively carried out by women. It involves the exchange of calls initiated by the hosts and responded to by the visiting party as they enter onto the marae (the home or meeting area). 

It was important for us to try and incorporate a way to respectfully acknowledge the traditional owners of the land we were standing on into the ceremony, but we were unfamiliar with the appropriate cultural protocols. We reached out to a family friend who not only taught us about the importance of the Karanga in connecting families and strengthening bonds, but also gave us the most extraordinary gift of flying his two nieces down from Auckland to perform a Karanga they had written especially for us. It was honestly mind blowing and we couldn’t have imagined a more incredible way to start the ceremony.

Danika walked between her parents, neither one of us wanted to incorporate the concept of “giving away” the bride. The Karanga created the perfect entry, as it truly felt like the joining of families. 

Where we stood during the ceremony was purely based on height, Verity is shorter, so we put her on the higher side of the hill!

The most important thing was really thinking about what we ACTUALLY wanted, not to be swayed by what we thought was expected. We wanted the day to be a celebration with our loved ones, done our way, and it was perfect.

Tell us about your family style dinner at your wedding. 

We had a family style dinner with private caterers. The caterers were able to give us some options to choose from which helped us make a bit of a shortlist. We had canapes before the main course of lamb cutlets, and they recreated our favorite salad. For dessert we had a beautiful lime and gin cake from a local bakery.