After nearly five years of engagement and delays due to the coronavirus pandemic, former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern She married her longtime partner Clark Gayford privately on Saturday.
Details of the event were closely discussed by the pair, but the ceremony reportedly took place at a luxury vineyard in the scenic Hawke's Bay region, 320 miles from New Zealand's capital Wellington.
Only family, close friends and some of Ardern's former MPs, including her successor and former prime minister Chris Hipkins, are believed to have been invited.
Earlier, police met with a small group of protesters who had plastered dozens of anti-vaccine posters on the walls outside the venue.
One protester was also seen holding a placard reading “Remember the jab order” on the outskirts of the site.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Prime Minister Gayford, 47, reportedly began dating in 2014 and got engaged five years later, but the Ardern government's measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus have limited the number of participants to 100 people. As a result, the wedding, scheduled for the southern hemisphere summer of 2022, has been postponed.
“That's how life is,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said when making the decision to cancel the wedding. “I dare say I'm no different from thousands of other New Zealanders.”
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who took over as party leader in 2017 at the age of 37, quickly became a symbol of the global left.
She epitomized a new style of leadership and was praised around the world for her response to the worst mass shooting in the nation's history and the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.
In 2018, Ardern became the second world leader to give birth while in office. Later that year, she attended the United Nations General Assembly in New York with her young daughter.
New Zealand under Ardern has some of the toughest coronavirus mandates in the world, and several rallies were held in her final year as prime minister.
It also sparked a level of outrage in some quarters never seen before by New Zealand leaders.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern shocked New Zealanders in January 2023 when she said she would step down after five and a half years as prime minister because she no longer had “sufficient stamina” to carry out her duties fairly in an election year.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has since announced that she will be temporarily joining Harvard University after being appointed to a dual fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School.
She also took on an unpaid role fighting online extremism.
In June, Prime Minister Ardern received one of New Zealand's highest honors for her role in guiding the country through mass shootings and the pandemic.
She was appointed Dame Grand Companion. I mean, people will call her Dame Jacinda Ardern.
