Rain Drops & Roses Anna's Magical Day!

Tears flow as the Go Girl makes promises to her guy

- Sebastian Van Der Zwan

She’s an in-demand Hollywood actress, but Anna Hutchison spent the week before her wedding working as a tour guide, showing her Los Angeles-based friends and her Boston-born groom’s family around some of the most stunning parts of Aotearoa.

The tribe of travellers went caving in Waitomo, jet-boating in Taupo, bathed in hot springs in Rotorua and hiked out to Cathedral Cove on the Coromandel. “We figured if we were asking people to come all this way, we had to show them the absolute magic of New Zealand,” grins the former Shortland Street and Go Girls star, who was born in Auckland but now lives in LA. “It’s been such a rad week. I’ve never been more proud to be a Kiwi.”

However, Anna, 32, and her husband-to-be, talent manager and film producer Mike Gillespie, 36, have saved the best spot for last – scenic Mudbrick Vineyard on Waiheke Island, where they’re set to tie the knot on a hilltop overlooking Auckland City and the Hauraki Gulf.

The pair planned to exchange vows outdoors, but steady rain sees the 80 guests instead gather inside the winery’s luxurious lodge to watch Anna walk down the aisle in a gorgeous silk fishtail gown by Ines Di Santo, to the tune of Ed Sheeran’s “Tenerife Sea”.

After the ceremony, she tells Woman’s Day, “I’ve played a bride a couple of times on film and TV, and worn the most amazing made-to-measure costumes in shows like Spartacus and Legend of the Seeker, so I felt very relaxed about everything, but as soon as I saw Mike, the emotion hit me.”

And Anna’s groom is similarly overcome. “She looked so beautiful, it put tears in my eyes,” Mike later recalls. “I was feeling fine as I waited, but when I saw her, I got very emotional.”