Rustam & Harustat’s Surprise Glenorchy Heli Proposal

Weather or not…

Even as we were minutes away from jumping in the helicopter, to be honest it was hard for me to believe that Rustam & Harustat’s Surprise Glenorchy Heli Proposal was actually going to happen!  Rustam and I had been planning this day together for months.  However,  in the final few days the weather in Queenstown had been cloudy and rainy nearly every day.  As a result, there had been a lot of plan changes.  There were dozens of emails, text messages and phone calls trying to make it still happen.  In the end the weather and the final plan turned out to be slightly different to what Rustam had envisioned but still totally awesome.  And most importantly, Harustat said yes!

The plan…

Rustam’s original plan was to do a heli snow landing with Heli Glenorchy on the Tuesday evening at sunset.   We had it all planned out.  Cristian (wedding filmer from Eureka Films) and I would pretend to be amateur landscape photographers who just happened to also be booked on Rustam & Harustat’s “flight-seeing” heli flight.  Rustam had told Harustat that he had planned some sort of “snow activity” surprise.  As part of this surprise he told her she would be blindfolded mid flight.  Once landed on the snow, Rustam would make a heart shape out of the rose petals he had brought with him, play some of their favourite music over his bluetooth speaker, drop down to one knee, tell Harustat to take the blindfold off, and ask that one question…

The new plan

But of course, it didn’t end up being quite that simple in the end!  It was cloudy and rainy all day Tuesday and Rustam & Harustat were unable to fly to Glenorchy from Milford Sound where they had been doing a cruise.  So we rescheduled to the next morning and had to re-jig our plans.  Because Rustam & Harustat needed transport from their accommodation (the stunning QT Queenstown) and I was their best option, we had to re-think our cover story.  So now Cristian and I were professional shooters shooting stock promotional footage for Destination Queenstown.  The story was that as R&H’s original flight had been cancelled Heli Glenorchy had helped them out by squeezing them on to the flight for our shoot. 

Mother nature doesn’t follow the plan…

Unfortunately, come Wednesday morning the weather was still windy and rainy and we had to postpone again.  Come 130pm and again the weather was no good and we had to postpone.  By this time, Rustam, Cristian and I had exchanged many text messages, emails and phone calls with many plan changes.  As a result, it was hard to keep track of what the latest cover story and plan of attack were!  But finally, come 245pm Wednesday afternoon, I picked up Rustam & Harustat and drove them to Glenorchy (trying not to give the game away and blow my own cover story while chatting with them on the 40 minute drive).

The reality

We got to Glenorchy early, grabbed a quick cup of coffee at The Trading Post and then it was time for our safety briefing and a quick plan of attack with the lovely Sonya from Heli Glenorchy.  At this stage the cloud was still low so we weren’t able to fly to any super high mountain tops.   However, our awesome pilot Rivvy (AKA Phillip) suggested we fly to a spot he calls “One Tree Hillnear Lake Luna.  And what an awesome spot it turned out to be!

When we landed, Rustam kept a still-blindfolded (and slightly bewildered) Harustat in the chopper while he set up the heart shaped rose petals and bluetooth speaker set-up with Rivvy’s help.  Cristian and I pretended to be shooting landscape photos.  However, because Harustat was blindfolded it meant that we could easily take photos of them without giving the game away.

Queenstown Wedding Photo & Film Packages

Recently Cristian and I worked together to come up with some super affordable Queenstown Wedding Photo & Film Packages.  To learn more about our Queenstown Wedding Photo & Film Packages, click this link or email me at patrick@fallon.co.nz.

P.S. If you enjoyed this blog post, you might also want to check out these posts and pages;

Surprise Queenstown Heli Proposal WITH PHOTOS – How To Pull It Off

Roshan + Sujata | Surprise Queenstown Heli Proposal

How to find your Dream Queenstown Engagement Photographer

Harshal & Rajvi’s Surprise Cecil Peak Heli Proposal