Love Is A Journey Ben & Kate's Fairytale Wedding

The Shorty heart-throb gets his real-life happy ending

- Cloe Willetts

It was a romantic moment on a boat trip on Rotorua’s Lake Tarawera when Shortland Street actor Ben Mitchell finally popped the question to Kate McMahon five years ago.

Their lovely young daughters Mila and Sofia were with them, and after a day stopping at different bays, Ben told his long-term love there was one more surprise, before turning off the engine and pulling out a diamond ring. Then he asked her to marry him.

“It was really special,” recalls Kate, who gave birth to their son Nico almost two years ago. “We’d just had the time of our life, picnicking and swimming in natural hot-spring pools on my favourite kind of day, with blue skies.”

Fast forward to Saturday, March 7, at Cheltenham Beach in Auckland’s Devonport, and the sky is the same picture-perfect blue, and sun streams on a quiet reserve where family and friends have gathered to watch Ben and Kate wed.

Twenty years ago, the Riverhead-based couple shared their first dates at this very spot, after meeting through Kate’s mother Leigh Vlasich, who worked at a gym with former Mr New Zealand Ben.

The couple spent months courting one another and shared their first house here, and admit a wedding beside the lapping waves of Waitemata Harbour feels like coming home.

With views of Rangitoto Island behind him, Ben stands quietly composed, dressed in a black Barkers suit and accompanied by six groomsmen.

The actor flashes his signature grin as he welcomes guests, including his parents Edward Mitchell and Karen Hennessey, and his actress colleague Ngahuia Piripi and her actor beau Teone Kahu. Former Shorty star and good friend Cameron Jones is also among loved ones, back in Auckland after a stint living in Los Angeles.