Our wedding will be in Kerikeri, down a stretch of rural road, past a house with a huge avocado tree on the front lawn. In the 1930s a Scotsman obsessed with China and its riches of ivory and gold built a house that paid homage to the pagodas he had seen on his travels. Now, it is owned by a Buddhist couple and on site there are gypsy caravans with outdoor baths, safari tents with working fridges and queen sized beds, and a treehouse. There are pear and plum trees, an arch of climbing pink roses, and hydrangea bushes. A stone buddha looks down on lazy, fat koi slumping around a pond. Ancient gum trees swish along the river banks. At dawn, there's a chorus of hundreds of birds singing and tweeting and chirping at each other and at the sky.