JUNE 2018| The Australian Women’s Weekly 67
asleep, so she’d insisted he watch it again.
On the second viewing, he noticed
that one of the wedding scenes had
been ilmed on the island of Gozo, in
Malta, where he had lived for nine
years as a child. “He decided there and
then that was where he was going to
propose,” Lisa explains.
So Mark organised a trip with his
new love to see his family in Malta. He
proposed on a yacht, at sunset, with an
old friend playing guitar. “It was very
romantic,” Lisa says, beaming.
They had both thought they would
never marry again. Mark had been
married for 25years and Lisa, 56, was
married to ironman Grant Kenny for
23 years. “Until,” says Lisa, “you meet
the right person. A friend’s husband said,
‘If you don’t marry him, I will.’ And I
knew he was right.”
So the dreamy, mellow mood of the
wedding day was the result of three years
of romance and imagination, as well as
all that muddy, back-breaking work.
The guests had been asked to wear
white, which gave a special warmth to
the touches of pink decoration and the
bride’s ’60s-inspired powder-pink gown.
Lisa’s “jungle buddies” Keira
Maguire, Natalie Bassingthwaighte,
Tegan Martin and Julia Morris (whom
she met onI’m a Celebrity...Get Me
Out of Here!), mingled on the dance
loor with Lisa and Mark’s closest
family and friends. Harry Gallagher, 94,
who was Lisa’s very irst swimming
coach, was there. And, of course, Lisa’smother, Pat, wouldn’t have
missed this wedding for the
world. She was given special
dispensation to ignore the dress
code because, “the mother of the
bride can wear whatever she
wants” and she chose green.
The couple’s collection of
vintage cars was put into service.
A pink and white Kombi van
brought the groom’s party to
the rose petal-covered carpet
that led to the outdoor altar.
Mark’s son Jesse was his best
man and his daughters Tahlia,
Aliana and Leticia were at his
side, carrying long-stemmed
fuchsia roses.The bridal party arrived
in a convertible Cadillac. Lisa’s son Jett
wrangled the long pink tulle veil as she
alighted from the car in her show-
stopping dress. Mark had not been
allowed to see the dress. “I asked him to
draw what he thought I would be wearing
and he was way off,” she chuckles.
Lisa had searched for dresses in
Sydney and Melbourne, but inally
found a French lace in a fabric house
in Sydney and knew it had to be the
centrepiece of her gown. “They didn’t
have much left but I loved it so much,”
she says. There was so little fabric that
there was no margin for error, and
every skerrick was used.
Lisa wanted a very local wedding, so
she asked Sunshine Coast seamstress
Marilyn Crystelle to make the dress.
The beaded lace was embellished with
sequins, beads and silk ribbon lowers
for the bodice. Marilyn sourced a range
of the highest quality French tulles in→