Former Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern and fiance Clarke Gayford have been engaged since 2019, but called off their wedding ceremony amid the Covid-19 Omicron outbreak in January 2022. Will they get their happy day this summer?��

There’s been coalition talks with Winston Peters, a Premiership, a baby, a pandemic, a landslide victory and a shock resignation - so a little old��wedding to her long time love��should be a stroll up the aisle for Dame Jacinda Ardern.��

The��Herald��understands the former Prime Minister, 43, and her TV presenter beau Clarke Gayford, 47, will wed this month.��

Gayford laughed��when the��Herald��asked about the nuptials this week.��

“I can’t believe you thought you could call up and I’d just tell you all.”��

The Gisborne native said he had “nothing to add”, while Ardern couldn’t be contacted.

Others with knowledge of the ceremony are also remaining tight-lipped about the wedding’s details.

But the Herald has been told the event will take place at a vineyard in Hawke’s Bay - more than 200km away from their originally planned ceremony which was scuttled by the Covid-19 pandemic.

No bookings to the public are available to the public on the day of the wedding in mid-January.

The invite list is set to feature many of Ardern’s former colleagues in the now-opposition Labour Party; including party leader Chris Hipkins.

The couple began dating in 2014 after Gayford, a marine enthusiast and host of��Fish of the Day��and��Moving Houses,��contacted the then-Labour list MP about proposed legislation in 2013.

Clarke Gayford and Jacinda Ardern first met at the Metro Restaurant Awards in 2012. They began dating in 2014. Photo / Doug Sherring��

Gayford popped the question five years later with his��grandmother’s ring on Mokotahi Hill in northern Hawke’s Bay, as Diplomatic Protection Service officers kept watch nearby and a local dog tried to eat the chocolate he’d packed for the occasion.��

The cliff-top proposal came 10 months after the��birth of the couple’s daughter Neve��and 18 months after Ardern became the country’s second youngest Prime Minister when the then-Labour Party leader formed a coalition with Peters’-helmed NZ First.��

They’d made no plans “at all” for the wedding, Ardern told media after news of the engagement broke almost two weeks after the Easter proposal, when a ring was spotted on her left middle finger during a ceremony at Pike River.��

“I have absolutely no idea”, she said, when asked when the wedding would be.��

Then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and fiance Clarke Gayford pictured celebrating Labour's landslide election victory in 2020.��

Her words would prove prescient.��

Less than a year later the��Covid-19 pandemic kicked off a round of restrictions��that included lockdowns, border closures to those without citizenship or residency, and an at-times oversubscribed managed quarantine system for Kiwis coming home.��

The couple’s wedding would eventually be booked for the 2022 summer, with the venue understood to be the farm homestead at Nick’s Head Station, 25km south of Gisborne.��

Jacinda Ardern and Lorde embrace on stage after the then-Prime Minister presented the Grammy-winning Kiwi singer with the New Zealand Music Awards 2017 People's Choice Award. Photo / Norrie Montgomery��

The luxury rural estate, at which Grammy Award-winner Lorde was also understood to be on hand to entertain the couple’s loved ones and friends, is owned by��US hedge fund billionaire John Griffin��and his wife Amy.��

But the arrival of the Omicron variant in late January 2022 and subsequent move to the red traffic light system - which restricted gatherings to fewer than 100 - spoiled the pair’s plans.��

“Such is life”, Ardern said of their decision to call off the wedding.��

“I am no different to, dare I say, thousands of other New Zealanders.”��

Jacinda Ardern and Clarke Gayford are parents to daughter Neve Gayford, pictured as the family walk to a memorial event for Queen Elizabeth in 2022. Neve was born eight months after her mum became Prime Minister. File photo / Mark Mitchell��

The three-time Mt Albert MP had previously described herself as “the least-engaged bride”, with Gayford in charge of organising the nuptials, but vowed there were no plans to delay their vows indefinitely.��

When she��resigned as Prime Minister��almost a year ago, citing exhaustion, the bride-to-be included a special message to Gayford alongside promises to try and find ways to “keep working for New Zealand” and take Neve to her first day of school.��

“And to Clarke, let’s finally get married.”��

Cherie Howie is an Auckland-based reporter who joined the Herald in 2011. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years and specialises in general news and features.��