MAGIC ON THE MOUNT

KERRIE

“We first met in Portugal. I was on my sister’s hens’ do, and Ant was on his friend’s stag do. We arrived at the hotel to witness 20 Mario and Luigi characters planking across the lobby floor!

Over the next few days, we ended up seeing their party often; either at the swimming pools or at bars. Ant and I ended up chatting a few times, and we connected straight away.

I managed to track Ant down on social media, later on. We chatted for a while, which ended up with both of us finding any free moment possible to talk. He lived over 400 kilometres away from me, so meeting up wasn’t a simple task.

Ant finally travelled the distance, and we had our first date! This date was the same day he proposed nine years later, on the 15th of July.

“I was totally surprised! The photo was taken right at the perfect moment – although most of my friends thought it was a staged photo, but you can believe me when I say I am not that good an actress. Richie (Mount Hutt’s photographer) captured the moment perfectly, so you can see my actual reaction in the shot. I was sorting the kids out to try and get a nice family photo, which we don’t have many of. I turned around to find Ant on his knee.

At the time, everything seemed to go so slowly. I remember thinking “What happens now? Do I take the ring? Does he put the ring on?’ My brain just didn’t want to work.

I ended up taking the ring from the box and putting it on myself, and putting the ring on wrong. Right finger, wrong hand! This is classic me, but hey – it all adds to our story.”

ANTONY

“Last September, we boarded a plane to start our new lives here in New Zealand. In the past, I had said that I would propose on the Uffington White Horse Hill in Wiltshire England; mostly because we had never been there before, and the views are apparently stunning.

Then COVID-19 hit, and that got me thinking that life was too short to wait. We will have been together for a decade in July 2021, which sounded like a good milestone to hit. To mark the occasion, I would propose to Kerrie.

“And then a close friend and godfather to our daughter passed away. It hit me like something I’d never felt before. I needed to bring forward the date by a year. So, [I] got to thinking, and then, it came to me – the top of Mount Hutt! Who needs a white horse on a hill in England when you can have a white mountain in New Zealand?

“After planning the trip, and having a ring made, I had a flash of inspiration and wondered if the moment could be captured by the Mount Hutt media photographer. I went into the office, and the staff pulled out all the stops.

“Moving here last October and leaving all our family and friends was very hard. In some ways, we would love to get married back in our hometown and have a big party on a family farm, but then we really feel like New Zealand is now home. Let’s be honest; we have been waiting nine years and had two children and moved to the other side of the world; there’s no rush.”

AS TOLD TO Joshua Brosnahan PHOTOS Richie Owen, Mt Hutt