Matilda Rice and Art Green at the New Zealand Television Awards, hosted at SkyCity in 2017. Photo / Norrie Montgomery.
Weddings bells could be chiming for former bachelor Art Green and his beau Matilda Rice today, with speculation a secret island wedding is on the cards.
Rumours have been flying around that today will be the big day. Several sources close to the Herald believe the pair planned to tie the knot on Waiheke Island.
It's understood Green's sister, Emily Hlavac Green, flew into the country yesterday from her base in the US.
Green and Rice got engaged late in 2017, during a holiday in Rarotonga.
Soon after, the pair shared the news with their Instagram fanbase.
"So something quite exciting happened in Rarotonga ... I got to pat a giant trevally named Gina!" wrote Rice.
"Oh and also, we got ENGAGED! Actually pinching myself that I get to wake up to that face every day for the rest of my life."
The pair have been together for around four years, since they met on Three's dating show The Bachelor NZ in 2015.
It's been a full-on few years for the couple. Last year they launched a ready-meal home-delivery company called Plate Up, and have recently started hosting a podcast: Well & Good with Art & Matilda.
They continue to dabble in a number of other ventures - Rice co-hosted the 2018 season of TVNZ's Heartbreak Island and both Green and Rice earn money through their work as "influencers".
After telling Next magazine that they couldn't afford to buy an Auckland property, Rice and Green looked a little further north and snapped up their first home in Warkworth in December.
The pair fully embraced the lifestyle earlier this year, setting up a chicken run and moving in five chooks.
A post on Rice's Instagram account this morning suggested they were kicking off the (potential) wedding day at their new abode - she snapped a picture of Green feeding the birds outside their run.
"The man loves his chickens," she wrote.
The pair's lips were locked on plans for their impending nuptials - which they had originally intended to take place this summer.
Midway through last year they told Women's Day that wedding planning had been put in the "too hard basket".
"Deciding on invites has just been one of those things we keep lumping into the too hard basket," Rice had said.
"Art isn't really a details man, so I have a lot of planning to do – but at the rate we are going, there'll be no one at the wedding!"
Any further planning around the big day had been under the radar, which was likely due to confidentiality agreements incorporated in a magazine deal to cover the nuptials.
There was no word as to which Waiheke spot could be hosting the celebrations, nor whether the wedding menu would be paleo.
The flight was on its way to Auckland when it was forced to return to Christchurch.