Olivia + Keegan by Katrina Cooke Photography - Together Journal

When we first started dating, I got very carried away one day saying goodbye and embarrassed myself hugely by saying “see you later, love you”. Maybe this was a sign because since then everything was history.

Tell us a little about yourselves, what you do, what you love…
Olivia: I am a sports and women’s pelvic health physiotherapist. I am currently training for my first half ironman after being inspired when Keegan completed the full ironman in 2021. My favourite hobbies are wheel pottery (wish I did this more), going for a walk along a beach or in a forest, fishing and water sports. I love spending weekends away with Keegan in our roof top tent to a cute little campsite, beach or lake where we can get fish and chips, go for a swim and relax.

Keegan: I am a sports musculoskeletal podiatrist. I enjoy my sports such as AFL, football, triathlon training and golf. I love being able to drag Liv along to golf where we can play together. Liv’s only requirement is we get a cart. I love being in the outdoors and exploring new places but on a rainy day or if we just feel exhausted nothing beats a movie afternoon, playing afternoon or bake bread together.

When did you first realise that this was someone you’d like to spend the rest of your life with?
OH: When we first started dating, I got very carried away one day saying goodbye and embarrassed myself hugely by saying “see you later, love you”. Maybe this was a sign because since then everything was history. Keegan was my partner and best friend in one. He was whom I felt the most safe with, trusted and supported but also independent and able to pursue what I wanted.

KP: During lockdown in 2020, the time that we spent together locked up in a small one bedroom apartment with just each other’s company made me realise that Liv was my person. Our already tight bond, love and friendship grew with new found interests, hobbies and activities which we enjoyed together. We got through 100 plus days cooped up in a small house together and didn’t kill each other but got closer, I think that was a good sign.

Was there a proposal? Tell us a little about it…
KP: We were down in Queenstown with Liv’s family for the Christmas and New Years’ break. I always plan secret adventures or activities when Liv and I go on holiday so she was fooled and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It was the Second of January and off we left to go to the Heli pad. However, my timing was out and I had about 45 minutes to spare. So I decided to aimlessly drive around for 40 minutes, trying to keep her off the scent of what we were doing. Finally we got to the Heli pad and I explained that we were doing a Queenstown scenic flight! This didn’t come to a surprise for Liv as she knows I have always wanted to do this.

We took off from Queenstown and headed to Cecil Peak, Liv making a comment about how lucky we were to be by ourselves and not have a fully booked tour. The pilot played along and started to describe different landmarks until we reached the peak. We both got out and headed to the rocky cliff edge while the pilot shut the chopper down and headed over to take some photos. This was when I got down on one knee and asked Liv to spend the rest of her life with me. Before I was even able to finish saying her full name she had said yes and threw her arms around me. We then celebrated with some bubbles while admiring the view.

Tell us about the vision you had for the mood or style of your wedding…
We wanted it to be modern and timeless so opted for a black tie theme with only black or white colours to be worn. We wanted all the flowers to be white with minimal greenery. Because the wedding was held at my parent’s house (OH) we tried to match the theme with the style of the house. Mum and Dad’s house was all concrete with wooden floors and very open plan. So we had quite a large upstairs inside-outside flow for our reception and the outdoor upstairs area overhung the downstairs deck where our ceremony was located. This allowed us to have guests upstairs and downstairs for the ceremony.

With all the flowers and ceiling floral arrangements being white, we opted for black bar cleaners and stools and then black or white platters for our food. We both wanted it to be simple and uncluttered, so tried to keep things to a minimum, allowing enough space for people to hover or rest but not all be seated at once. This partial standing/seated arrangement in combination with floating canapes all night allowed us to get around to talk to everyone at a decent hour and then enjoy dancing which started surprisingly early and didn’t stop. Our reason for not having a sit down dinner was because we felt it was really important our guests felt like they could mingle, talk to us and not just be stuck with the same group around them for a majority of the time.

What was one element you were happy to splurge on?
The music. We cannot express enough how amazing our musicians were. Jasper and Jane were impeccable. From the moment they arrived, nothing was even organised from our side in terms of when they would start playing etc. They just got themselves set up and immediately into position for the ceremony starting to sing when guests arrived. This was then followed by the most perfect transitions of ceremony entrance song, to signing the registry song and then exit. We then thoroughly enjoyed acoustic music for six hours into a reception to the point where the majority of our guests were up dancing at 7pm. This was when Jasper and Jane switched to providing a DJ set that fitted the room, allowed all our guests of all ages to be involved in dancing and everyone raved about it still to this day. Looking back on our day now and discussing it with friends or family the most talked about moments was how fabulous the musicians were. We are already finding ourselves trying to think of an excuse to come up with an event or party we can host just to have them back!