You Go Girl! Anna's Surprise Paris Proposal

The Star's bringing her Hollywood hot shot home to wed.

- Sebastian Van Der Zwan

Standing barefoot under a blossoming pohutukawa and gazing over Auckland’s sparkling Hauraki Gulf on a scorching summer’s day, Anna Hutchison snuggles into her fiancé and sighs.

“This is such a beautiful place,” says the former Shortland Street and Go Girls actress, who has been based in Los Angeles for the past five years. “I feel that more and more every time I come back.”

Anna, 31, and her husband-to-be, Boston-born talent manager and film producer Mike Gillespie, 35, are in New Zealand for their annual reunion with her whanau. And as the glittering 2.25-carat Asscher-cut diamond on her finger suggests, they’ve also got some wedding planning to do.

“We’d been looking at venues on the North Shore, where I’m from, but we’ve decided on Waiheke Island,” says Anna, who will tie the knot next summer. “We’re asking people from all around the world to travel here, so it’d be silly not to show them our best. Waiheke is a gorgeous place.”

Though Mike’s family is 20 hours away by plane, the decision to have the wedding in Aotearoa was an easy one. Anna explains, “We thought about having it in Hawaii, which is kind of the middle ground, but we’ve travelled so much and New Zealand’s food is just the absolute tops – and food is very important to us!”