Dame Jacinda Ardern and Clarke Gayford pictured at their wedding. Photo / Felicity Jean Photography
Dame Jacinda Ardern and Clarke Gayford pictured at their wedding. Photo / Felicity Jean Photography
OPINION
Jacinda Ardern’s marriage to Clarke Gayford at a vineyard in Hawke’s Bay wasn’t quite a royal wedding but Ardern is a Dame, which makes it about as close as we get. It wasn’t what you would call a fairytale wedding. It was, in its way, a weddingfor our times, its original date postponed by the uncertainties of a pandemic, its celebrations planned and cautiously executed under the radar. “It’s been a case of where is Wally?” mused 1News’ man in Hawke’s Bay, Henry McMullan, romantically. “Just where is Jacinda?”
From the time she was spotted having a drink at a “potential hens do in Hastings”, the coverage had an endearing yeah-nah, only-in-New-Zealand vibe. Any updates? “Yes, well unfortunately not,” said McMullan. Sausage rolls were reported on. “Rather quirky canapes,” observed the Daily Mail.
On the happy day, McMullan was planted far from the action at Craggy Range vineyard. “Unfortunately, I’m stuck outside on the wrong side of the fence.” Sounds of revelry reached our lonely correspondent across a paddock. “I’ve heard a couple of cha-hoos,” he noted wistfully, “and a fair bit of clapping.” Henry waded into dangerous territory for any live cross: wedding fashion analysis. “A lot of colourful dresses and a lot of floral prints,” he reported valiantly. “And hats for the men.”
He drew to a merciful close with an abrupt segue into a ringing endorsement of an area still recovering from Cyclone Gabrielle. Jacinda’s big day, he declared, is evidence that “Hawke’s Bay is open and we are one hell of a wedding destination”! Cha-hoo.
Jacinda Ardern walks the aisle at Craggy Range Vineyard in Hawke's Bay. Over the fence were media — and protesters. Photo / George Heard
Daily Mail revealed to offshore readers what a strange little nation we remain: “Jacinda Ardern’s wedding day is picketed by anti-vax protesters as new details of her dress emerge …” Inevitably, the occasion drew the attention of as many as a handful of anti-mandate diehards, a movement that is increasingly a little like a local, Covid-related version of the US’ sinner-picketing Westboro Baptist Church. They didn’t seem at all weird. Daily Mail: “A female protester was later seen at Craggy Range holding a placard reading, ‘This s*** is bananas’ while playing anti-mandate propaganda on a large boombox.”
A quiet wedding at a pretty vineyard. It could scarcely have been more circumspect. It was still too much for the danker corners of social media. Attacks on Ardern’s appearance, her partner. “Jabcinda”. The usual dismal catalogue of misogyny, most of it too depressing to repeat. How dare she get married in her own country after ...? etc.
After what? Nothing is perfect. According to an October report from the New Zealand Medical Journal, New Zealand’s Covid response saved about 20,000 lives, a death rate per million people 80 per cent lower than in the US. After that.
The wedding underscored the double standard Ardern has contended with since she was interrogated on her baby plans on breakfast television back in 2017. Our new prime minister has been in the job for five minutes and we have already been remorselessly over-informed on his family’s taste in matching festive season jimjams, his wife’s biceps, Alejandro Tabilo getting Luxoned at the tennis … Every rare sighting or passing indication that Ardern had a life apart from politics brought accusations of exploiting her pregnancy, her baby, her existence as a woman in public life. Luxon is yet to face the same social media backlash. It seems male politicians are allowed to have families.
Ardern was a leader through a string of extreme events in unprecedented times. Social media cookers can cook away but history will judge her based on facts, including the facts now coming out about New Zealand’s Covid response. She did a good job.
And sometimes a pandemic-delayed, relatively modest, quietly conventional wedding in Aotearoa can also be read as a small act of defiance.
