How can you have a white wedding wearing a red dress?

Easy, get married in a whiteout at the top of Rainbow Skifield which is exactly what Richmond couple Jacqui Sinclair and Brendon Hart did last week.

Mr and Mrs Hart slipped into their wedding attire in the skifield manager’s house on Monday, put on their ski boots and skis and took the T-bar up to the top of the field.

Then they trekked a short distance to the ridgeline overlooking Lake Rotoiti where they joined celebrant Rachael Schepers, photographer Mike Robertson and skifield manager and friend Daryl Tarkhill for the ceremony.

‘‘We really love the outdoors and decided we wanted an outside wedding but we didn’t want a big ceremony,’’ Jacqui said.

‘‘We both love skiing and Brendon is an engineer and he’s been doing some volunteer work on the snowgroomer at Rainbow. So we asked Daryl if we could get married there and he said ‘yes’.

‘‘It looked like it was going to be a nice day but the weather closed in and we got married in a whiteout.’’
Mrs Hart said Mr Tarkhill also became a de facto best man holding the flowers and rings.

After the ceremony they skied back down to the cafe where they signed the wedding papers.

‘‘I had to have special buttons on the bottom of my wedding dress so that I could hitch it up so that I could ski,’’ Mrs Hart said.

Mr Tarkhill said it was the first time that anyone had been married on the skifield in the six years he had been manager and it was also ‘‘the first time I’ve seen anyone on the T-bar wearing a dress’’.

He said the wedding generated a lot of interest with skiers congratulating the married couple.

‘‘It was a lovely service and an amazing location,’’ he said.

Mr and Mrs Hart are planning to have a wedding party for their friends and family later in the year. They are also planning a honeymoon with Jacqui vetoing Mr Hart’s suggested destination of a tropical island, instead insisting they go on a skiing honeymoon to Japan.