Dame Jacinda Ardern wedding: Former PM spotted at potential hens ...

Dame Jacinda Ardern’s hens do may well have been spotted at a Hastings venue.

As the former PM and Clarke Gayford’s Hawke’s Bay wedding draws near, a source told Hawke’s Bay Today that the wedding guests had already arrived and Ardern had visited Hastings Distillers, a boutique bar for tasting its award-winning gins and liquers.

She was with about a dozen women on Wednesday afternoon, the source said.

The source said they were seated towards the back of the venue behind long navy blue velvet curtains.

Hastings Distillers co-owner Kate Galloway said she could “neither confirm nor deny” that Ardern and her wedding party had visited her establishment on Wednesday when approached for comment.

It is not yet known where Gayford’s stag do will be held, but it could be related to his love of fishing.

Three charter companies approached said they had not taken Gayford or his wedding party on the water.

Ardern and Gayford have been engaged since 2019, but called off their wedding ceremony amid the Covid-19 Omicron outbreak in January 2022.

Hawke’s Bay Today was told the event will take place at a vineyard in Hawke’s Bay, more than 200km away from where it was understood the wedding was planned to be held.

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.

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 Winston Peters and New Zealand First.

When Ardern 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.”

A local celebrant says the event will put a spotlight on the region and encourage others to pick Hawke’s Bay as a wedding destination.