Hannah and Mauro Barsi had always dreamt of a glorious wedding in Italy — a dream shattered by the start of the Covid-19 pandemic two years ago.
“Mauro is Italian and he'd never been there but I had been,” Hannah said.
“So, I thought I'd drag him back to his home town.”
Unable to jet off to Italy, which was hit hard by the virus, and with gathering sizes restricted in New Zealand, planning was near impossible.
So, the couple chose to tie the knot at a small and intimate wedding in picturesque Queenstown instead.
It was all organised in just nine days.
Mauro said the planning period was stressful, but that at least it was over quickly.
“And the people who are there with you are the people who love you. It’s everything good in a really short space of time and it just works,” he added.
The pair aren’t the only couple opting for modern-day elopements and smaller weddings in the face of Covid-19, either.
Glacier Southern Lakes are among the helicopter companies happy to step in for someone's big day where required.
Pilot Matt Young said elopements were becoming popular.
“With more of the restrictions we’ve got coming on, people will start to not get so many people at their events,” he said.
“So, they might just pull the pin and sneak away and get it done because, really, it's about the people isn't it?”
Wedding planner Dawn Thomson said she’d seen two to three times more overseas couples wanting to book and have their wedding in New Zealand.
She said the small wedding looked like it was here to stay.
“We definitely see this as a real positive … a lot of traditions of old aren’t so relevant anymore these days and couples are really looking for a way to celebrate their love in an original way.”
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