Rugby star shares special pictures of his wedding day
WALES rugby star Hadleigh Parkes and his wife, Suzy Ainsworth, have shared gorgeous pictures of their wedding in New Zealand.
The couple married on Friday, June 22, at the Kauri Bay Boomrock venue in Auckland.
Pictures from their special day show the Wales rugby international and his beautiful bride, Suzy, in the winter sunshine, and show the stunning coastline in the background.
Wales team-mate and fellow Kiwi Gareth Anscombe attended the occasion with his fiancée, Milica, while Wales and Scarlets fly-half Rhys Patchell was also pictured in Auckland with the newlyweds in the days after the wedding.
Capped eight times for Wales, Parkes moved to Wales three years before making his international debut against South Africa in December 2017 and has since gone on to shine on the Wales rugby stage.
One of the Scarlets’ most influential players previously discussed the challenges they faced in planning the wedding around the rugby season, especially given the way the west Wales region were performing in Europe.
Parkes said in March: “Myself and my fiancée Suzy were looking at dates to get married and we decided on Easter weekend.
“We just saw it was a free weekend and thought it would be a good time to go back to New Zealand and get married. It will still be summer back home and being Easter weekend more people could attend.
“We were going to get married by the seaside so it would have been a lovely occasion. But thankfully Wayne (Pivac) pointed out that it was the weekend of the Champions Cup quarter-finals, so we didn’t book it.
“It would have been a right ballsup if we had!”
After postponing those Easter plans, the nuptials came almost a week after Wales’ final summer Test in Argentina, with Parkes cementing himself as a key player on the summer tour to the US and South America.
He came on as a replacement for an injured Steff Evans in the 22-20 win over South Africa in Washington, with the Wales camp arranging a stag do for Parkes as part of the victory celebrations.
Parkes then put in an eye-catching performance the following week after starting in Wales’ first of two Tests against the Pumas.
And what made that display in Wales’ 23-10 win over the Pumas all the more impressive was the fact Parkes suffered a compound fracture in his finger – when the bone pierces the skin – during the opening minutes of the fixture, yet played the entire game.
He was whisked away to hospital straight after the match for surgery, and the injury ended any chance of him featuring in the final Test.
Wales coach Warren Gatland said at the time: “He did it about four minutes into the game. He’s had that cleaned out and he’ll be seeing a surgeon when he goes back to New Zealand. He’ll have a hand specialist to look at that.
“That’s something that will probably keep him out for about six weeks. It’s a shame for him because we thought he was very good against Argentina. He defended well and his communication and chat in the midfield was excellent.”