Article from Stuff.co.nz
The day Lainy MacIver cancelled her flights from Scotland to New Zealand for her brother’s wedding, she knew she had to do something to make up for not being there.
So MacIver, and 20 other family members who couldn’t make it to the wedding due to Covid-19 border restrictions, ordered life-sized cardboard cutouts of themselves as a surprise.
“We wanted to find a way where we could be part of the day, and to make my brother and sister-in-law feel like we were with them even though we couldn’t travel to be there in person,” she said.
“And it meant we could be in the wedding photos.”
The bride’s brother collected them and hid them until the wedding day.
“After the wedding ceremony we received the videos of my brother and his wife seeing the cutouts for the first time, their reaction made everything worth it. We would have given everything to be there, but Covid didn’t allow it to happen.”
Groom David MacIver shed tears when he saw the cutouts.
“It was an incredible surprise for us both and all the wedding guests loved how they could see the Scottish family,” he said.
Mike Whyte of The Print Guys said he had seen an increase in the number of cutouts purchased since the start of the pandemic.
New Plymouth-based print and design company Graphix had also had an uptake in its life-sized cutouts it had been producing for more than ten years.
Office manager Jess Martin said it had produced two to three times more than it usually would because of Covid.
“Birthday parties and weddings are our most popular events for surprise life-sized cutouts,” she said.
“We were asked to make a life-size cutout of one of the bridesmaids who lived in Australia, and couldn’t make the wedding.
“She was wearing the bridesmaid dress and holding a bouquet.”
