Can you get married in a New Zealand art museum? Looks like you can at the Govett-Brewster (they’re even registered on the New Zealand Wedding and Honeymoon directory) and the Dunedin Public Art Gallery is into it too. You can get hitched on their mezzanine (pics here) and we assume, if the groom's up to it, he can carry the bride up the massive staircase. Maybe not. City Gallery in Wellington is coy about their deal offering post wedding cocktail parties, go –for-it, the ceremony itself? - email us in confidence.
On the other hand, if your heart is set on an art wedding, there are other things you can do. Get the guests to sign up on the wedding register at artbay for a start. That’s "the space where “New Zealand contemporary and über art meet”. For him, perhaps a work by Craig Primrose of a couple of guys riding horses over rugged mountains. For her you could do worse than one of Chris Medar’s junk metal sculptures of a chicken.
In the United States weddings in art museums are all the go and have been for some time. Some rules apply. For example at The Phillips Collection in Washington DC, it's no candles, all trays to be carried below shoulder height and champagne always to be uncorked in the safety of the basement. Liability insurance is of course a must have for everyone.
Still, you do have to feel for wanna-be art bride Anna Gonis. She booked the terrace of the modern wing of the Art Institute of Chicago (it costs $6,000 a pop and double that if you want the entire third floor with the Terzo Piano restaurant) only to find on the day that the view of the city was blocked by a (wait for it) brightly coloured art work. So much for Anna’s white-on-white minimalist wedding. As you might imagine she is doing what any serious American thwarted at anything would do: suing. By the way, the offending artwork was by ex Govett-Brewster artist-in-residence Pai White.
Image: White on white at the DPAG
