"So How Long Will This Ordeal Take?"
I was working with a beautiful adventurous couple recently, who have decided to take a break between hiking two of NZ’s top walking tracks (Milford and Routeburn) to get secretly married in Paradise, near Glenorchy. We started to discuss dates, hair and makeup, flowers and other important details before the bride asked: “So how long will this ceremony ordeal take?”. This made me giggle as the definition of an ordeal is: "A very unpleasant and painful or difficult experience”... AND that is definitely not the experience I want for any of our couples!
However, for some couples (whether it’s the bride, groom or both) they just dread the actual thought of a formal wedding ceremony, even when they have eliminated all the other stresses like over complicated invite lists and excessive budget blow outs.
Knowing that many of our couples are just not into the whole traditional marriage thing, Hitched's aim is to eliminate any ‘ordeal’ so that even the most skeptical of bride or groom are going to have an amazing moment in this wild mountainous landscape.
After nearly three years of organising our Wildly Romantic Elopement Packages we have had the honour to meet some of the most beautiful fee spirited couples who have found the ceremony is just a simple and beautiful formality to their whole elopement adventure.
Each couple is different when it comes to their ceremony vows. Some have vows for each other, read from scraps of paper or from their mobile phones. They may have letters from family members for their new in-laws to be, or they may just want the celebrant to keep to the simple lines that are required to make their union legal.
The Hitched team aim to make the ceremony relaxed and informal with times to laugh and joke and to make it unique to the them. One of our more ‘one of a kind' ceremonies was with Scott and Shandi on our Wildly Romantic Mountain Elopement. These guys had thought about writing vows but in the end they were dreading the ceremony part so just opted for it to be quick and simple.
On their day in October, we flew as high as we could go in the helicopter and landed on a snowy peak. Once we hopped out of the chopper we quickly relised it was so cold with a biting winds and ice as well as snow. So to stop us all from being snapped frozen the celebrant raced through the ceremony as myself and the Dawn (the photographer) kept sinking thigh deep into snow drifts while attempting to get the best photos. In absolute hysterical laughter, we all quickly re boarded the chopper and waited for the feeling to come back to our hands and faces, at which point the celebrant said “Well - that was definitely the quickest ceremony I’ve ever done!”. It had been amazing up there but we decided to fly to a more sheltered (warmer) alpine location to watch the sun set. For Shandi and Scott the ceremony turned out to be the best (and funniest) they could have imagined or wished for.
What will your ceremony adventure be?
