When you're in the business of being front and centre at dozens of big white weddings every year, how do you decide to exchange your own vows? For Taupo celebrant Samantha Johnston, the answer was simple; very differently. With only eight guests (plus me tagging along in lucky 9th place), Sam and Brad eloped to exclusive New Zealand hunting lodge, Poronui, tucked away in the crisply beautiful Taharua Valley.

James and Jo's great love began 14 years ago and it was amazing to see how the emotional energy created by a wedding day was able to take them both back there to the feelings we all remember from the start of a relationship.

It was a treat for us to take our creative show on the road to Oreti Village in the tiny lakeside settlement of Pukawa, on the western shores of Lake Taupo. A wilderness of native New Zealand bush and early Maori and Colonial history, the area promised us some exciting opportunities to play in a very different landscape from our normal haunts as Hawke's Bay wedding photographers.