Jacinda Ardern marries Clarke Gayford after five-year engagement

Jacinda Ardern, the former prime minister of New Zealand, has married her partner of a decade, Clarke Gayford, in a Hawkes Bay vineyard wedding attended by a small group of relatives and friends.

The ceremony took place late on Saturday at Craggy Range vineyard, a spokesperson for Ardern confirmed, with dinner and dancing at the popular wedding venue expected to continue into the night. Guests numbered about 50-75 people, the outlet Stuff reported.

Ardern wore a fitted ivory sleeveless, cowl-neck halter gown with a high neckline and low back by New Zealand fashion designer Juliette Hogan, paired with a long veil and a chignon hairstyle, in official photos.

The wedding followed a nearly five-year engagement for Ardern (43), and Gayford (47) – a television presenter best known for hosting fishing shows – and an earlier postponement due to the coronavirus pandemic.

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In a style typical of New Zealand’s restrained approach to celebrity, there was little fanfare ahead of or during an event which might have prompted a frenzy elsewhere. However – also typical in the country of 5 million where everyone knows everyone – the venue and date had been an open secret among New Zealanders in recent weeks.

Ardern was the Labour prime minister of New Zealand from 2017 until January 2023, when she abruptly resigned from the role, citing exhaustion, as her party’s popularity waned at home.

“To Clarke, let’s finally get married,” she said, during emotional remarks to reporters when she quit the post. She and Gayford became engaged in 2019 – news that only emerged after she was spotted wearing a diamond ring.

Their wedding was planned for early 2022 but postponed due to Covid-19 gathering restrictions that were implemented by Ardern’s government as the Omicron variant surged.

“My wedding won’t be going ahead but I just join many other New Zealanders who have had an experience like that as a result of the pandemic,” she told reporters in January 2022, adding: “Such is life.”

Saturday’s ceremony was officiated by the couple’s friend and former deputy prime minister Grant Robertson, the spokesperson said. Ardern and Gayford’s five-year-old daughter, Neve – born during her mother’s premiership – walked down the aisle with her father wearing a dress made of fabric from her grandmother Laurell Ardern’s wedding dress.

Ardern drew global admiration during her premiership for her liberal values and exhortations to kindness, as well as her leadership style during several disasters that befell New Zealand. Young, stylish and charismatic, she was photographed for Vogue and treated as a celebrity abroad at a time when rightwing populism was on the rise in other western nations.

The couple first met in 2012 at an awards night in Auckland that Gayford was hosting. A year later, he wrote to Ardern as his local opposition legislator to express concern about a proposed national security law. The pair met for coffee; Gayford took Ardern fishing on a date shortly after.

Guests pictured arriving for the event included prominent Labour Party figures, including the former prime minister – and now opposition leader – Chris Hipkins, who took over the premiership after Ardern quit; the former speaker of parliament Trevor Mallard, now ambassador to Ireland; and ex-cabinet minister Annette King, now New Zealand’s ambassador in Canberra.

Juliette Hogan, whose distinctive silk garments Ardern was regularly pictured in, custom-made Ardern’s dress, the spokesperson said. The designer’s website says Hogan makes 10 bespoke bridal gowns a year. Gayford wore a black custom-made suit by New Zealand fashion house Zambesi.

Hawke’s Bay is a sunny, wine-growing region, popular for weddings, on the eastern side of New Zealand’s North Island. Saturday’s weather was sunny and cloudless, with temperatures of up to 29C forecast for Havelock North, the town near which Ardern’s wedding took place.

A small number of protesters – opponents of vaccine mandates that were enacted by Ardern’s government and that ended in 2022 – gathered outside the venue on Saturday morning, some with signs and a loudspeaker, according to the New Zealand Herald. Ardern had become a lightning rod for vitriol and misogynistic abuse online in the months before her resignation.

She has kept a low profile on political matters since her departure from parliament, eschewing media interviews.