Rings fans skip $3000 fee, marry at i-SITE
What started out as an online relationship exchanging Lord Of The Rings banter two years later led to an American couple flying 13,000km to say ‘‘I do’’ under the Hobbit gatehouse.
Software developer Josh and chartered accountant Ashley Baurle got hitched last Friday outside the Matamata i-SITE centre to represent the start of their ‘‘unexpected journey’’.
Their two-minute ceremony included their marriage celebrant, photographer, and a couple of on-lookers as well as people yelling ‘‘congratulations’’ out the window while they drove past.
The Hobbiton Movie Set sees around 10-15 couples get married within their gardens a year, but this is the first time locals have experienced a wedding outside the i-SITE centre.
‘‘The wedding was very us,’’ Ashley said. ‘‘We have already done the big expensive wedding in our last marriages, so we wanted it to be more about how we felt about each other and the memories we’ve shared together.’’
The Kentucky lovebirds first meet in 2018 on the dating site Bumble, deciding on a whim to give love another chance, after both previously being divorced. Knowing almost every word in the
trilogy, Ashley, 35, led the initial conversation with- ‘‘BTW . . . I’m just an E´ owyn looking for her Aragorn.’’
‘‘Oh crap, I meant Arwen.’’
Josh, 37, well versed in Lord Of The Rings trivia as well, followed it up with ‘‘To be fair, Eowyn was a pretty bad ass lady and slayed the witch-king. Although that whole unrequited love for Aragorn bit does make it a little iconic.’’
From there they were inseparable, working on projects together and raising their family of cats named Ketchup, Pickle, Pearl and Belmore and Ripley – which were named after characters in and In spring 2018 Josh popped the question with a book reflecting back on how far they’ve come.
Ashley said that although she had always been a fan of Lord Of The Rings, the themes within the movie were what she wished for in their relationship.
‘‘There’s messages of courage, hope and friendship and love and getting through challenges, so the Lord Of The Rings movies for me were almost Christmas movies and I watch them every year instead of the Grinch and Rudolph.
‘‘I’m very lucky to be able to experience those same things alongside Josh.’’
When looking for wedding locations, the two were throwing arrows towards getting married on an Alaskan glacier, but in the end decided Matamata was where their true Middle Earth lay.
‘‘We were sitting on the back porch smoking and Ashley said ‘let’s go to New Zealand and get married in front of a hobbit hole’ and I said ‘run the numbers’,’’ Josh said. ‘‘So she looked it up and this was way cheaper than anything else we were looking at.’’
Ashley said they originally had plans to get married at Hobbiton, but instead opted for a ceremony outside the i-SITE.
Later that day, they had their wedding photos at Hobbiton, with an official tour planned on Wednesday.
‘‘We ended up at the i-SITE because it’s $3000 to get married at Hobbiton, it’s not really the price that was too much, but we weren’t looking for a big production, so we didn’t really want to pay $3000 for a twominute ceremony,’’ Ashley said.
‘‘Our photographer said ‘why not get married outside of the i-SITE because it looks like it should be at Hobbiton’.
‘‘And she was right because back home nobody has questioned it, they all think it’s in Hobbiton.’’