Planned in an hour! ‘OUR LAST-MINUTE LOCKDOWN WEDDING'
These Auckland lovebirds tied the knot with just 60 minutes’ notice
They say the course of true love never did run smooth – and there’s nothing like a pandemic to prove it! With one COVIDcancelled wedding behind them, Auckland couple Paelina and Joshua Passfield couldn’t believe their bad luck when their phones blared with a Civil Defence notification advising them of an upcoming lockdown, effectively cancelling their second lot of plans.
Unable to face the idea of postponing their nuptials again, Paelina decided there was no time like the present and declared they’d be getting married that night, before Auckland entered Alert Level 3 at 6am the next day. She wasn’t able to organise a last-minute photographer for their whirlwind ceremony, so fortunately, Woman’s Day has come to the party to take some professional pictures of the happy newlyweds!
“It was the one thing we didn’t have on the night,” grins Paelina as we take our bridal snaps.
NOT TODAY…
The happy couple, who are both 28, met during their first week of university in 2013 and knew pretty quickly that things were serious. In 2016, self-described “true romantic” Josh dropped to one knee and proposed to his love in their garage.
He and Paelina were both keen on a big ceremony, but their plans were thrown into disarray when large gatherings were banned due to COVID-19. “We were devastated, but we contacted our vendors and tried to rearrange everything,” says Josh.
Assuming, like most of us, that 2021 would be their year, the couple rescheduled their big day and looked forward to March 4, 2021, with their separate hens and stag dos the weekend before. It was that weekend when the bride-to-be noticed a few of her guests whispering between themselves, with worried looks etched across their faces. Then the Civil Defence alerts went off and Paelina realised her dream day could be called off once more.
“I’d been planning my wedding since I was a little girl and to have it taken away again was so devastating – and so close to the big day,” she says. “I realised we needed to sort this out… now!”
Bringing the hens and stags together for emotional support, Paelina looked around at her family – many of whom had travelled from the Cook Islands – and decided that, actually,
she and Josh would be getting married then and there.
“I saw my dad walk down the driveway and just burst into tears. That’s when we decided it was happening – and it was happening in an hour.”
With a start time of 11.30pm planned, the couple’s friends and family swung into overdrive, hauling the pre-prepared wedding decorations out from the couple’s garage, arranging toetoe and candles for a makeshift aisle, and warning the neighbours there was going to be a good reason for the sudden sound of Cook Islands drums in the driveway.
“Everyone really came through for us,” says Josh. “One of my friends’ dads is a celebrant and he was still up watching the Joseph Parker fight, so he agreed to come over to perform the wedding. Thank goodness we had the marriage licence already.”
And what about the cake? Paelina laughs, “I actually had a hen’s cake, so one of my cousins removed some, er, chicken-related decorations from the top and stuck the ‘Mr & Mrs’ sign on there instead. It looked just like a wedding cake.”
With her gorgeous lace gown fastened and Josh looking dapper in his suit and korowai, it was finally time to get hitched. Just after midnight on Sunday morning, the couple exchanged vows under the stars at their house in Maˉngere.
“It was the most amazing feeling,” says Paelina. “It felt like a huge weight had been lifted off our shoulders, and we could finally move on and enjoy the next phase of our lives. The ceremony was everything we could have wanted.”
Well, except for the wedding photos – but after speaking on air to Jeanette Thomas and Robert Rakete of The Breeze after their big day, the radio stars had the bright idea to call their friends at Woman’s Day…
“We’re so thankful to have these photos,” says Paelina. “We never thought we’d have an opportunity like this in our lifetime. Thank you so much. We’re just so happy that we’re finally married!”
‘It felt like a huge weight had been lifted off our shoulders’
Anormal evening at Kym and Neil Haywood’s home sees the couple sitting squashed at both ends of their couch while their daughter Jade is upstairs in her room.
There’s no space for her on the sofa because between the couple sits an enormous 60kg kangaroo called Rufus!
“It was obvious from early on that Rufus was a different boy,” Kym laughs. “He’s always loved human company, and even as a baby his favourite place was the couch. From the minute he could pop up onto it, he’d lie with his head dangling off the side. Even now he comes in most nights and sits with us.”
Kym, 51, began looking after kangaroos four years ago when a neighbour asked her to help with an orphaned joey. Soon, Kym had 28 rescued roos on her Port Lincoln, South Australia, property and they all started out being bottle-fed in her living room. “At one stage I had eight joeys inside,” she says. “They need bottles every four hours and want cuddles too. It’s a fulltime job.”
Now running the Pumpkin’s Patch kangaroo sanctuary at their home, Kym explains how most joeys transition to a life outside in the paddock. But Rufus was a reluctant roo.
“He loved snuggles,” she says. “He’d sit on Neil’s lap when he was working on the computer or hop off to the bathroom to play with the toilet paper. He wasn’t sure about the outside world.”
Nowadays Rufus has conceded to a partly wild life.
“The other roos are happy to sit in the dirt but Rufus has a dog bed by the door,” Kym laughs.
And every evening, he lets his family know he’s ready to join them on the lounge.
“At about 5.30pm he’ll be sitting by the back door,” says
Kym. “There are chew marks on it from when we haven’t let him in quickly enough! Then he stays until we go to bed at about 10pm.”
Rufus, three, has become a social media star thanks to his cute antics – his Instagram page has 10,000 followers! He’s also appeared on UK TV and receives messages from all over the world.
“People just love him,” says Kym. “We’re really proud but Rufus doesn’t care about being a global sensation. As long as he has his place on the couch, he’s happy!”
Visit @rufusthecouchkangaroo on Instagram.