Former MKR contestants Nev and Kell tie the knot
As weddings go, it was ‘the duck’s nuts’ when My Kitchen Rules battlers Kellie Griffiths and Neville Groves tied the knot at a deliciously romantic country festival – despite last-minute jitters.
Gorgeous bride Kell felt her legs turn to jelly as she stepped out of the wedding car, and even Nev – the self-styled ‘Brad Pitt of WA’ – admits to a few wobbly moments.
‘You know what? When I saw her, I was nervous,’ concedes the 49-year-old groom. ‘I just couldn’t look at Kell to begin with. I got all this dust in my eyes and they were watering a bit!’
It’s no wonder the ‘fair dinkum’ mining tradie was moved, and he wasn’t alone. The couple’s 112 guests – including members of their close-knit ‘ MKR family’ – gasped, laughed and cheered throughout the laid-back ceremony, in which Nev vowed he would always share the remote, but never try to do the laundry!
‘My whites are all grey, because he just chucks everything into the washing machine at once,’ explains 45-year-old Kell, who pledged she would wake Nev with
a smile every day. ‘So I was pretty happy with his promise.’
The bride looked simply beautiful in an elegant, vintagestyle beaded corset dress from Blue Cherry Bridal and a borrowed veil pinned to her hair as she walked down the outdoor aisle on father Allan’s arm. In keeping with wedding tradition, shop manager Kell carried an heirloom lucky horseshoe gifted by her mother, Christine, and also wore a flash of blue on her garter.
‘It was pretty good,’ she smiles, relieved to be Mrs Groves at last following a messy war of words involving her former partner – who also happens to be Nev’s half-brother.
‘I was petrified when I first got out of the car, but my dad calmed me down. I couldn’t have got through it without him!’
The happy couple’s big day – staged at a scenic rural property in Baldivis, WA, owned by generous best friends Alyce and Lyndon Davies – went off without a hitch. Early rain stopped sprinkling and the sun shone down as the bride and groom exchanged gold and diamond rings.
‘Bling city, we need dark glasses,’ laughs Kell – in front of celebrant Deb Featherby.
Their guests included MKR mates Anna Bruno, Hazel Whalley and Alex Ebert, plus proud Italians Luciano Ippoliti and Martino Convertino, who was the MC at the reception under a flower-decked marquee.
For their bridal waltz, the newlyweds danced to Ed Sheeran’s tender ballad, Thinking Out Loud, before cutting their white and dark chocolate mud gateau, which sat on top of a cupcake tower.
‘We partied on until around 1am and didn’t want to leave then,’ says Kell, still blown away by the joy of the occasion.
‘We can never thank Alyce and Lyndon enough for making our wedding so special. It wouldn’t have happened without them.
‘And as for our MKR family, they are friends for life. The show was a magnificent journey and cemented us together, for sure.
‘We met such wonderful people, it was better than winning.’
The couple are honeymooning in Bali.