Samantha & Tyler | The Narrows Landing

This wedding let the greenery of the beautiful Narrows Landing speak for itself, adding a few touches of finesse to enhance its natural beauty. The greenery together with hues of white, gold and a bit of pink (of course!) and you have a wedding that is pretty classic and timeless. And wait till you see what the boys arrived in on… how could you make a better entrance to your own wedding?! 007 vibes anyone?

Where did you purchase your dress and accessories from:

I purchased my dress from Jessica Bridal Couture in Auckland. My Earrings were Meadow Lark and my shoes were from Windsor Smith.

Where did you find your inspiration for your wedding day:

I found most of my inspiration for our wedding on Instagram by following various wedding vendors that I liked. I didn’t want to follow too many trends as I wanted our wedding to reflect us and be quite classic and timeless. We also spoke to all our friends and family that are married and got inspiration on things they liked about their weddings and what they would have changed.

Our love story began…

in 2016 when I had just finished High School and Tyler was at University. We had known each other for a long time through church and I was actually friends with Tyler’s sister! We met through mutual friends and started hanging out, drinking coffee, going for walks, and the rest is history.

We splurged on…

Our venue. We loved the convenience of having our ceremony and reception together at one place and having the wedding planner at The Narrows Landing was well and truly worth the splurge. The day ran so smoothly, planning was stress free and the staff were amazing. Also the food at The Narrows is out of this world, we are still getting comments about our wedding food and we were so impressed.

Tell us about your venue and why did you choose it:

We had our wedding at the amazing The Narrows Landing in Hamilton. We loved The Narrows for its incredible lush green grounds and luxurious feel. The Narrows landing made planning our wedding very easy and enjoyable. The ease of having the ceremony and reception at the same beautiful place, made our decision very easy.

Tell us about the proposal:

Our proposal was pretty epic, Tyler definitely out did himself! It was June 22nd, 2019 and Tyler told me we were going to the mount for the day which is my favourite place in the world… but that we had to stop at our friends house on the way. When we arrived I saw a Helicopter in the paddock that was waiting for us. Tyler told me grab my jacket and come with him and we jumped in the helicopter… I definitely knew something was going on then. We took off and headed towards Raglan and then followed the coast North from the main beach. We landed on a cliff in the middle of nowhere looking over the West Coast! Tyler led me over to a point on the cliff, got on one knee and asked me to marry him! Of course I said yes. Then from behind a hill came our two best friends Matt and Sara and our friend Ben taking photos! They had been flown there before us and were hiding as we landed in front of them. We all sat on the cliff-side and had a picnic looking over the ocean drinking wine and eating together, it was truly magical.

Our wedding style was…

Classic and timeless with some modern, sleek elements. We went with the classic colour scheme of greens and white with accents of gold and of course pink because I couldn’t resist. The Narrows Landing has so much lush greenery and its own style, that we just built on what was already available as we loved that vibe.

What were the highlights on the day:

The main highlight was having everyone we loved in one place. It felt so surreal to have all our people together to celebrate with us. Another highlight was it hadn’t rained for months and then on our wedding day it poured BUT for our 30 minute ceremony the rain held off. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect and we got the outside ceremony we had dreamed of. We also loved our reception party! We are blessed with friends and family that are insanely talented musicians, so we had a rolling band all night of people jumping up and doing some songs, even my Dad jumped up and sung a few bangers. It was so much fun and we had the best night!

We saved on…

Stationery and invitations. We decided to do name place cards and menu’s together and one of my Bridesmaids worked some calligraphy magic for all the names and table numbers. For our invitations we created a website as our wedding invitation and that was the best decision, made the RSVP process so simple.

Do you have any tips for other brides & grooms?

Our biggest tip for other Brides and Grooms is to not sweat the small stuff. The day goes so fast and you want to be soaking it all up. Arrange people to be your organisers so when small things need to be sorted you can rely on someone else to handle it without taking your attention away from the day. And with that, minimise the expectations and jobs for the bridal party on the day. We wanted our bridal party to enjoy the day as much as we were, so no jobs for them made the day feel like we were all being treated and partying it up together.