Cementing their love with scenic South Island nuptials (featuring cocktails and cheeseburgers) Conrad Reyners and Phillip von Fury tell Annabel Dickson all about their big day.
Conrad Reyners, a global regulatory counsel for a multinational company, and Phillip von Fury, a fashion designer and product developer, met when they were set up by a mutual friend 10 years ago.
The now London-based Kiwi couple enjoyed a cocktail date for their first official meeting that ended up where all good nights lead, a late-night fast-food burger run in Auckland’s Queen St. The rest was history.
“Our diets haven’t evolved much since then so we made a nod to this at our reception. We served grasshoppers [cocktails] on the bar and just before last call the waiters came around with silver platters stacked with McDonald’s fries and cheeseburgers.”
The pair were married on the 10th anniversary of their first date in the quaint coastal Otago town of Kakanui, a place close to Phillip’s heart due to many family holidays over the years. A reception followed the weekend after in a unique setting in Wellington.
Conrad and Phillip talked Viva through their special day including their personal and special ring design journey, a Thom Browne suit, and the tiered lamington wedding cake.
THE VISION
Conrad: We had very different visions going into the planning, Phillip even joked about it in his speech
Phillip: Yes, I said I wanted a ceremony so small Conrad might not even make the guest list, meanwhile Conrad wanted to invite his entire LinkedIn network!
Conrad: So we did two events; a small ceremony in Kakanui, coastal Otago, followed by a dinner party reception in Wellington the following weekend. The best of both worlds.
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Advertise with NZME.Phillip & Conrad: The one thing we could agree on is that neither of us are big “wedding people” so we really put the emphasis on planning a fun event for our guests rather than a traditional wedding.
THE LOCATION
Phillip: Kakanui is a very special place to me, as my family have a long history with Kakanui as a holiday destination. Out of all our guests, only my Aunt and Uncle didn’t have to travel to attend the wedding.
Conrad: Kakanui is a bit out of the way for most of our friends and family but they all fell in love with the place. We did a big fish and chip run to Ōamaru the night before for anyone who had already arrived and people really made a weekend of it.
THE CEREMONY
Phillip & Conrad: The ceremony was at the Kakanui Church in Coastal Otago. The 150-year-old building was designed by architect Robert Lawson who is best known for Larnach Castle and First Church in Dunedin, and is now privately owned by an amazing couple who are faithfully restoring it. We reached out to them on Instagram and they agreed to open their doors to host our wedding. The magic of small-town New Zealand is that we got on so well, we ended up inviting them to stop by the wedding to celebrate with us.
We walked down the aisle with our mothers to Never Too Much by Luther Vandross.
Our first kiss was to the victory fanfare from the video game Final Fantasy VII and as we signed the registry an instrumental version of Spice Girls’ 2 Become 1 played.
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Our close friend, Marina (Ngāti Kahu, Ngāti Tuwharetoa), welcomed everyone into the space with a karakia and our mothers did readings.
While we were away taking our wedding photos, Lemon Pie Caravan was set up on the lawn serving drinks and our friends quickly reset the church to set up simple trestle tables for dinner, along with the wines we ordered in (Black Cottage Pinot, Miru Miru Methode Brut).
We served a high-end take on barbecue and our families had made all of our favourite desserts – pavlovas, trifles, woozy cake – for a relaxed meal in the church.
THE PLANNING
Conrad: We organised both the ceremony and the reception from London, where we currently live. It was a challenge to execute many decisions sight unseen, but we trusted our vision (and each other). On the day we were tremendously grateful for our family and friends, and our vendors, who all came through and supported us. It’s always risky organising from so far away, but we were confident we had the right team in place and they came through on the day. It was a regret that we had to outsource the food tasting to my mother and sister though.
We especially want to thank Calum Buchanan, one of Phillip’s good friends who is a designer, who helped us to create bespoke placemats and individually curated table settings for every guest. The attention to detail was amazing, even if it did take four hours to cut them all out the night before.
THE RINGS
Phillip: Both of our rings are by Holly Marbeck of Mars Jewellery. Holly and I were in the same year of fashion school so there was an instant trust there tasking her with our wedding rings, plus she does amazing work. We gave her a loose brief; we wanted a signet ring shape to symbolise the formation of a new family. Then I wanted an orange stone and Conrad wanted a blue stone.
Conrad: Being a designer, Phillip has very specific taste so I knew better than to choose an engagement ring. Instead, I opted for a minimal silver band by Meadlowlark and offered for Phillip to design his own engagement ring after he said yes. We wanted our engagement ring to also be part of our wedding rings, to symbolise the decade we’d already been together so Holly melted down the silver band and placed a globe of it into each of our rings.
Holly then closed up what was left of the silver engagement bands onto each other into an infinity symbol, which our dog Doofus wears on her collar.
THE SUITS
Phillip: Getting married was my best chance to find it in the budget to buy a classic Thom Browne shortsuit. I’ve always resonated with Thom’s uniform aesthetic. I’m a fairly private person so wearing my dream outfit definitely helped me feel more comfortable to stand up in front of all of my loved ones and bare my soul on our big day.
Conrad: I wore a bespoke suit from Harvey and Hudson in Jermyn St in London, and a silk tie that Phillip had previously made for me as a birthday gift.
THE BEAUTY
Phillip: I blew the budget on my suit so I could hardly sell Conrad on flying a hair and makeup artist down to Kakanui. So I did my best Glossier boy beat and styled my hair with my usual Oribe products.
Conrad: We wanted to relax the morning of the wedding so we both got ready together at our Airbnb. Our photographer joked that she had never seen a couple get ready so fast.
THE FLOWERS
Phillip: I discovered the artist Liudmyla Trembovetska online who makes gorgeous flowers by hand twisting beads on wire. Liudmyla is a Ukrainian woman displaced by the Russian invasion, who had to relocate to Poland. I organised to have materials sent to her so that she could restart her business and in return she created the most gorgeous beaded floral bouquet for me. I chose green carnations inspired by Oscar Wilde and lavender after the way Abraham Lincoln’s male relationships were referred to in his biography. She even made a matching boutonniere for Conrad. At our Wellington reception, I gifted some stems to key loved ones who helped with the wedding.
Conrad: A few weeks before our wedding, the Kakanui Garden Club hosted a Melbourne Cup race-watching day in our venue. The space looked so vibrant and alive with colour so we reached out and asked if they would be interested in putting together some arrangements for our wedding. We told Alison from the club that while neither of us knew much about flowers we wanted something “dramatic and colourful” and she definitely delivered. She pulled in her son to help deliver one arrangement on the back of his lorry because it was so big. She dressed the church the night before so that it was a surprise when we arrived. All of the flowers were grown either in Alison’s garden or in the wider Kakanui community. We are incredibly grateful to Alison and the club’s generosity for really making the space special for us.
THE FOOD
Conrad: We both love fine dining. We reached out to Charlie Noble – one of my favourite Wellington restaurants – who also operate The Food Lab. They were amazing, the attention to detail, professionalism and service was fantastic. They even created our tiered lamington cake. Having a website for our wedding that allowed us to offer individual menu choices also significantly helped in lifting the quality of the event.
Phillip: The Food Lab truly were amazing in terms of quality and service, and we were very particular. I photoshopped little mockups of how I wanted everything to look and they really delivered. Some highlights were the Kiwi onion dip piped onto individual chips as appetisers and the classic Kiwi bakery treats for dessert, as well as the cocktail menu we invented for the day.
THE CAKE
Conrad: We love road-tripping around New Zealand and are suckers for a small-town Kiwi bakery, so we had mountains of cream doughnuts and custard squares surrounding an oversized tiered lamington cake.
THE RECEPTION
Conrad: Our reception was the next weekend in Wellington (where I am from) and it was fantastic. We chose Whisky and Wood, a beautiful, pared-back space and went with a diner theme – right down to printing custom labels for the sauce bottles on the table. High-quality food and wine were important to us, so we asked The Food Lab, run by Charlie Noble, to provide plated service which they did brilliantly.
The reception itself was MC’d by Anita Wigl’it of House of Drag and RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under fame, who opened the night with a round of drag bingo and kept us entertained through the night with outrageous lip-sync performances, some too naughty to put into print here.
The team at our venue, Whisky and Wood, were also amazing. Picking a blank space as a canvas that we could make our own (instead of a traditional reception venue) was ideal and the Whisky and Wood team really helped us to make the event fun, joyous and celebratory.
THE PHOTOS
Phillip & Conrad: We really wanted a documentary photographer to capture our day rather than a traditional wedding photographer.
Phillip: We found Sara Tansy of Le Tans Photography online and immediately loved her work. I showed her a picture she had taken of a highland cow basking in the sunlight on top of a mountain and said, “if you can make me look this beautiful, I’ll be happy!”
Conrad: Sara is Wellington-based but she also flew down to Kakanui so that she could capture both days. She had such a calming energy that was perfect to be around. Because the events were a week apart, Sara edited a few photos ready for us to project onto the sheer curtains during our reception.
THE DAY
Conrad: Everyone says they cannot remember their wedding day, but by breaking it up into two events a week apart it meant we could really focus on each one individually. That meant we were truly present in the moment, could enjoy ourselves, really engage with our friends and family and have as much fun as our guests did.
Phillip: It was actually such an efficient way to see all of our loved ones while we were back in New Zealand. We might rent out Whisky and Wood for a party every time we return.
THE SPECIAL MOMENTS
Conrad: Apart from actually getting married, it was fantastic to bring our families together and to share such an important milestone with our dearest friends. We have been living away from New Zealand for quite some time, so bringing everyone together in Wellington and Kakanui was a wonderful experience.
We also are blessed with funny, witty and wonderful friends, who have been with us during various parts of our lives. Instead of traditional speeches, we went for six short, rapid-fire speeches in Wellington broken up throughout the evening. Part speech, part roasting, part reflections, some of them even had Anita Wigl’it in stitches.
Phillip: For me it was the vows. We each wrote our own vows and heard them for the first time at the wedding. Though obviously we sent them to Fi, one of Conrad’s friends who acted as our celebrant, to check they were on par with each other. I’m quite competitive and Conrad speaks professionally for a living, so when I got a tear out of him and a good response from the audience I was eating it up.
THE SURPRISE
Conrad: Unbeknownst to us, Phillip’s mum had gotten our families together to each make figurines of our gorgeous sheepadoodle Doofus. Doofus was unable to make the journey to New Zealand for the ceremony, but was there in spirit as there was a unique interpretation of her on every table. Everyone had thought their art pieces were just for the day, but we carefully bubble-wrapped every single one and they now have pride of place in our home in London.
ANY TIPS
Phillip: Don’t spread yourself too thin with all the wedding planning details, choose a few key elements that are important to you and focus on making those amazing. It is those highlights that become the standout moments for you and your guests.
Oh, and have your caterer pack two servings of dinner and dessert into takeaway containers so that you can eat once you finally make it back to the hotel.
Conrad: Hire a professional MC for your reception and invest in great providers – having Anita Wigl’it run our reception was seamless, stress-free, and allowed us to really be present in the moment. Outsource the execution, insource the meaning and what’s special to you. If you have the right people around you nothing can go wrong. But, do order one extra case of Miru Miru Methode Brut than you think you’ll need…
ANYTHING DONE DIFFERENTLY?
Phillip & Conrad: We wouldn’t change a single thing (except for the weather!).
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