Hey readers. So this is a very long overdue post. Dylan and I actually tied the knot in December last year! Yes – it’s been over 6 months since we had our wedding, and in the time in between we’ve done a ton of tramping, moved house 3 times, had 4 weeks in the USA (another wedding celebration), moved overseas, I started a new job. It’s actually been nuts. So now that we’ve been in Australia for 2 months and have finally just gotten connected to the internet, I actually have time to sit down and tell you how to plan a hiking/tramping themed wedding.
We decided in May last year that we would get married in December (when Dylan graduated with his PhD, so his family only had to come for 1 visit). I had been toying with the idea of having a tramping wedding as it is our obsession, but I wasn’t quite sure how to pull it off (e.g. spectacular scenery vs. ease of access for guests). Sadly, a helicopter wedding was out of our budget, but we still wanted something spectacular.
In June, we decided to do a trip along the Livingstone range. We had a fabulous day across the tops from Key Summit and realized that Key Summit would be the perfect spot for a wedding – only ~1 hour easy walk along the Routeburn track from the Divide – which is a mere 1 hour from Te Anau. This was feasible. Easy walk. Spectacular Scenery. All we needed was the weather to cooperate…
Tarns along the Livingston range
Key Summit – June 2015
In the meantime, I had to alert all of our guests of our crazy plan, as well as find a celebrant and photographer who were willing to get on board with a tramping themed wedding (and were sufficiently flexible considering we were very weather dependent). Somehow I lucked out and managed to get the most perfect wedding celebrant – DOC worker and former Milford Track Guide, Christine Officer. I lucked out again when the absolutely amazing photographer Jim Pollard agreed to shoot our wedding.
Fast forward to December…
The weekend before the wedding, Dylan and I decided to head up to Key Summit to scope out locations. The weather was atrocious. It was cloudy, rainy, freezing. It was literally snowing. Despite it only being a 2 hour walk, by the time we got back to the car, we could barely move our fingers. We decided to drive farther up the Milford road to scope out additional and alternative locations, as well as possible photo locations – should everything go south on the day of the wedding (weatherwise).
Scoping out wedding spots
Lovely weather for a wedding
The week of the wedding was chaos with friends and family arriving from overseas. To add to the ridiculousness of it all, on the Sunday and Monday before the wedding, Dylan and I took our respective Mothers & Sisters tramping to one of our favourite locations (Brewster hut) to give them a real tramping experience. It was a pretty epic trip, and despite pushing everyone to their physical limits, they still had a good time.
Pre-wedding family bonding tramp – success photo!
Upon returning from the tramp, Dylan and I were obsessively watching the forecast for the divide, and keeping our fingers crossed. The day of our wedding (a Thursday, of all days!) dawned a little breezier than we’d hoped, but it was sunny enough.
We met up with all of our guests in the carpark of the Te Anau Community centre and made a convoy of vehicles driving out to the Divide. As we got closer and closer to the Divide, the weather became misty, foggy and it started to rain (of course).
At the divide, we had a little pow-wow with our guests, celebrant and photographer and despite our guests being super keen to head up to Key Summit, instead we elected to drive 10 min down the road to a sunny spot…
And I’ll let Jim’s photos take it from here
So there you have it – our tramping wedding. As per any tramp, the weather didn’t cooperate and it didn’t quite go to plan, but we had a great time anyways. And of course, our photographer captured it perfectly!
A pure New Zealand wedding, with guests wearing tramping boots and all.
Happy tramping!
Backcountry Hijinks 