Remarkables! Beautiful wedding planned before law changed proceeds on NZ mountaintop

WHEN Shannon Molloy and Rob Battisti planned their wedding, it was illegal at home so they turned to New Zealand. Yesterday, the two men got their joyous celebration.

WHEN Shannon Molloy and Rob Battisti originally planned their wedding, it was illegal in their home town and so they turned to New Zealand and its Remarkables mountains.

In between the proposal and the planned big day, Australia legalised same-sex marriage.

But the long term partners decided to go ahead with their original idea of getting married in the stunning venue.

And so on Friday a plane load of the men’s friends and family descended on Queenstown in New Zealand’s South Island.

On Saturday afternoon in a joyous ceremony, Molloy and Battisti exchanged vows before their guests on a mountaintop in the Remarkables.

Molloy, a journalist and writer, and Battisti, a clinical psychologist and mind plasticity specialist, chose to stick with their finely tuned arrangements in the picturesque location.

On Friday, they were rewarded with a rainbow over nearby Lake Wakatipu, which Molloy posted on Instagram with the words, “I’ll take that as a wedding day sign”.

And about 5pm on Saturday as golden rays of sunshine flooded the valley below, the couple was finally married.

Shannon Molloy and Rob Battisti are married on a mountaintop in NZ’s the Remarkables in a joyous ceremony on Saturday.

The long-term couple planned their ceremony in New Zealand before Australia passed its same-sex marriage laws.

As plane loads of friends flew in for the couple’s wedding, a rainbow appeared over the bay, which Molloy said was ‘a wedding day sign’.

Molloy, a former print journalist, now works for Amazon, delivered a wedding speech that reproduced his own media column written last year during the same sex-marriage debate.

Tears were shed during the heartfelt vows he exchanged with Battisti, known on Twitter as @TheBendyBrain, and who is an expert in the mindset of children with cancer and addiction psychology.

Phones were banned during the ceremony and afterwards guests congratulated the couple amid much laughter as the wedding crowd headed for the reception in Queenstown.

Originally published as Remarkables! Beautiful wedding planned before law changed proceeds on NZ mountaintop