Two years after pandemic postponement, Dame Jacinda Ardern and ...

By Ryan Anderson of

After almost five years of engagement, and one cancellation due to a global pandemic, former prime minister Dame Jacinda Ardern is set to get married to Clarke Gayford, at a Hawke's Bay venue.

The couple have remained tight-lipped on details about the big day, but Stuff understands the ceremony will be small - with mostly family, very close friends and a few politicians.

Stuff has chosen not to name the venue.

On Friday afternoon, as preparations began, a large white gazebo tent had been erected at the venue, in the middle of a vineyard.

Staff could be seen setting up the area, which had rows of long wooden tables and chairs.

A lone security guard monitored the front entrance from the shade of a tree.

Forklifts moved through the venue carrying pallets of wine, as the final members of the public left through the front gates.

Former finance minister Grant Robertson and former Speaker of the House Trevor Mallard, who are both close friends of the former leader, are expected to attend, as is Ardern's successor and former prime minister Chris Hipkins.

The weather has turned on for the high-profile wedding, with temperatures expected to soar to almost 30C.

It was a long road for the couple to get to the official ceremony on Saturday with the Covid-19 pandemic putting a stop to their previous wedding plans.

The pair met at the Metro Restaurant Awards event in 2012, with Ardern attending as a guest of model and TV personality Colin Mathura-Jeffree, who'd featured on the cover of that month's Metro magazine.

Shortly after first taking office as prime minister in 2017, Ardern announced she was pregnant, and gave birth in 2018 to their first child together, daughter Neve Te Aroha Ardern Gayford.

Jacinda Ardern arrives in Wellington with baby Neve and partner Clarke Gayford. Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King

It was announced in May 2019 that the pair were engaged, after an Easter weekend trip to Mahia, a beach settlement on the North Island's east coast, near Gayford's hometown of Gisborne.

Ardern was then spotted with a diamond while she was at a ceremony in Pike River just a few weeks later.

Wedding plans were set down for the summer of 2022, but the government, led by Ardern, tightened gathering rules due to the Omicron variant of Covid-19.

After announcing the decision, the then-prime minister said "such is life" and that many other people had suffered much worse effects from the pandemic than a wedding disruption.

"My wedding will not be going ahead, but I just join many other New Zealanders who have had an experience like that as a result of the pandemic.

"And to anyone who's caught up in that scenario, I'm so sorry, but we're all so resilient, and I know we understand that we're doing this for one another."

- This story was first published by Stuff

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