Dani & Oli

"We are each other's biggest cheerleaders, we push each other to be the best versions of ourselves."

Oli and I first met at Rhythm and Vines. I was sitting with a group of friends when I suddenly noticed a new (and easy on the eyes) addition to the group, and for some reason, I took notice of the small tattoos on the tops of his feet. I couldn't figure out how I recognised them, and after debating for too long whether to say something or not, he had disappeared.

A few hours later when trying to battle the main stage crowd with some girlfriends, looking down at my feet as they etched a pathway through the crowd, I walked smack bang into someone. I suddenly noticed the feet I had smacked into, had those same tattoos atop them. After blurting out "How do I know your tattoos!" followed by a few awkward moments of confusion, we got chatting and from there, never left each other's side for the entire rest of the festival. 

Upon returning home, I went straight to my best friend's house and told her all about the boy I'd just met. He had just been accepted into medical school and was able to talk to me about my Dad's recent stroke, had played drums to my favourite, obscure pop-punk band for his NCEA assignment, and who had these tattoos I recognised but just didn't know how.

She was shocked, explaining that the reason I knew the tattoos was because she had been camping with him and his girlfriend at the time, a year prior. She had sent me pictures of his Instagram, one of which included a picture of his tattoos, saying she had just found my PERFECT guy who was so similar to me in so many ways.  Our first date followed not long after we met, and as they say, the rest is history! 

How have you grown as a couple since you first got together?

When we first met, we were very much still figuring out who we were individually. We lived our own lives and had our own battles to fight. As the years have passed (8 of them now), we’ve grown our life together in so many ways. Our families and friends groups are slowly becoming one, however, we both agree it’s still really important we maintain our own individual hobbies and goals. We’ve bought our first house together, have a beautifully spoiled cat, and go about life’s ‘mundane’ tasks together. But we wouldn’t have it any other way! We are each other's biggest cheerleaders, we push each other to be the best versions of ourselves. We’re fortunate in that we both share many of the same values and motivations; we believe in each other more than anyone else. Dani is organised, calculated and particular, whilst Oli is always looking for the next thing, and finding ways to tick even more boxes. It’s not to say we don’t still have our moments and our niggles, of course we do. But I think as we’ve grown together, we’ve also learned how fortunate we are to have found each other. 

Can you share one of your favourite moments together?

It’s so hard to pick a specific moment. But I think a real stand-out moment for us was the first time we attended Splore festival. Neither of us really had any friends who were going, but Oli’s cousin Gemma and her husband Ben (who also had their wedding bands made by you) had us totally convinced that we needed to go. 

We met some of the closest friends we have today, and have never missed a Splore since. I think it’s the closest you can get to completely losing yourself and that sense of “identity” based on what society expects of you. I think it was at times like that where we both truly saw how much we needed each other in our lives, in the best way possible. 

Oli - Tell us about the proposal and your journey to creating Dani’s ring. How did you find this whole process?

I always knew I wanted it to be a surprise. I didn’t want to lose any of the magic from her knowing and waiting for what was to come. But obviously with that, came a degree of risk… I was pretty sure she’d say yes, but I had no real way of knowing for sure, as believe it or not, marriage wasn’t really something we had talked about a whole lot (I found myself getting pretty carried away at a music festival in Budapest in 2019, I think I may have ended up announcing to the whole festival that I was going to marry her someday…). But there hadn’t actually been a significant amount of talk about getting married outside of that. 

I very much came to the decision that I wanted to marry her after travelling through Europe. Dani joined me for the first half of my trip before I started working in Glasgow for my medical school elective. That period away was the longest we’d ever gone without seeing each other, you know what they say - absence makes the heart grow stronger. 

Choosing Zoë & Morgan was never a question for me, it was just a given. I was so incredibly fortunate that our beautiful friend Thea actually worked with Zoë at the time. That, in combination with my cousin/surrogate big sister Gemma having worked with you previously made it a no-brainer.

In terms of the proposal, I’d organised a trip through the South Island where I grew up. Dani loves stars, her first cat was called Stardust, she has a star tattoo, and she just loves everything star related. I’d booked a glass-roofed retreat just outside of Lake Tekapo, to propose under the stars.

I booked a helicopter flight over Mount Cook and Franz Josef Glacier earlier that day and secretly organised for our photographer to join us, just to get a bit of a feel of what we were like as people (and also organised it as a bit of a backup in case the clouds foiled my plan for a proposal under the stars). I told the photographer to act as if she’d never met us and just offer to take photos of the two of us out of the kindness of her heart. I think Dani started to get a bit suspicious after seeing that every other helicopter that landed didn’t have a photographer…

We drove to our accommodation, playing music from all the mixtapes I’d made for her over the years. I told her I was taking her out for dinner, and whilst she was getting ready I lit candles all around the place. When she came out I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me. I then pointed out our photographer who’d been hiding in the bushes outside, capturing the whole thing!

Your wedding day was such a beautiful adventure to follow. Can you tell us about any special traditions you had on your wedding day?

In a way, our wedding day was very non-traditional. We had ‘brides and grooms people’, no matching outfits, mixed genders, just all of our best friends. I, Dani, had both my Mum and my Dad walk me down the aisle. We instead had a few elements woven into the day that meant something to us as a couple, some of which I’ll list below.

For years Oli was always known as the guy with a polaroid camera at parties, so at our wedding we used polaroid photos of each of our friends and family, either taken at our engagement party or throughout the years, as their dinner placeholders. 

We have a combined love for music and festivals, so with the help of some beautiful friends, we made custom ‘D&O’ beaded bracelets which we gave to each of our guests as an ‘admission’ to our special day.

Throughout our years together, Oli’s thing has been to make me mixtapes for special occasions and burn them onto blank CD’s. I decided I’d play him at his own game and surprise him with one on the morning of the wedding, filled with songs that made me think of him and that I hoped would get him excited for our special day ahead. 

We also wanted to show our love and our gratitude towards our two Mums, Sue and Lisa. They are some of our favourite people on the planet. I, Dani, was so extremely lucky to have crafted my wedding band using diamonds gifted to me by Lisa. So I plucked two diamonds from those and I worked with Zoe to create two little bezel-set, solitaire rings, one for Sue and one for Lisa, which we gifted to them on the morning of the wedding. 

Thank you so much for being such a key part of our love story, and for giving us the opportunity to relive our special day. 

- Love, Dani & Oli xx