Retired Tasmanian lesbian couple wed in NZ thanks to crowdfunding

Retired Tasmanian lesbian couple wed in NZ thanks to crowdfunding
Image: PHOTO: Bill Hedges

TASMANIAN couple Lee Bransden and Sandra Yates married over the weekend in a beautiful ceremony in Rotorua, New Zealand — and it was all thanks to the kindness of strangers.

The retired couple from the town of Davenport wanted to marry before Bransden succumbed to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, after her doctors gave her weeks to live.

When news of their wedding wish was made public, Australian Marriage Equality (AME) launched a crowdfunding campaign to assist the couple.

In the space of about a week more than $10,000 was raised — exceeding the initial target of $6500

During the ceremony, the couple thanked everyone who supported them.

“We will use this inadequate word of ‘thank you’ to everyone who has supported us in our fabulous journey to become married,” Yates said.

“Thank you for all the beautiful wishes and generous donations enabling us to succeed in our destiny to be wed.”

Her new wife added: “It’s been the most wonderful day of my life. I am married to the most wonderful woman. This should have happened in Australia. For any other Aussies wanting to be married, I can highly recommend the beautiful people of New Zealand.”

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PHOTO: Bill Hedges 
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PHOTO: Bill Hedges

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7 responses to “Retired Tasmanian lesbian couple wed in NZ thanks to crowdfunding”

  1. Congratulations to a wonderful couple! Shame on Australian ‘politicians’ for selfishly and arrogantly ignoring the sanctity and reality of spiritual-love between couples of the same sex, whose love and commitment is just as valid and real as the love within a successful heterosexual couple. It’s sad that Australia has been so backward on so many issues for so many years due to a handful of blinkered bigots and uneducateds who have more of a say than the wider comparatively wiser population; it’s hard to believe that not so long ago, we were a progressive country. Sigh.

  2. As a Kiwi I am glad we could help these women out….as a human being I am so angry that a dying woman had to make an international journey because her own government has so little regard for her rights, and the rights of all Australian LGBTIQ people.

  3. Australia come on – get the marriage equality bill passed right now please! Stop stalling on this Bill and Tony!

  4. ❤️ we were married in NZ 2014 on Valentine’s Day in the Auckland registry office and it was fabulous, we had been together for 19 yrs and we decided stuff the Australian stuffed up government and went to NZ, we are both five generations Australian and we will probably retire in NZ, we had to fill out one piece of paper for our license to marry in NZ, to have it recognised in nsw it takes six pieces of paper, nothing has changed with Aust red tape bureaucracy or ever will, looking forward to retirement definitely.

  5. Let’s never forget the indignity foisted on people in their private moments by rightwing politics. They had to get married in a foreign country. I would mail a bill for the airfares to every politician who opposes marriage equality.