Sun 16 Mar 2014 In: Weddings and Civil Unions View at Wayback View at NDHA
This month, Gresham Bradley and Steve Rogers married after 17 years together. They had a gorgeous day with guests in rainbow colours, doggy ring bearers, a performance from GALS and even a trip on the Pink Bus! Gresham writes (with input from Steve!): Steve and I first met when I came back to NZ in 1996 after living in Vancouver Canada since I was 15. I had few original friends here but one of the first of my new friends was Johnny Givins, (former GABA President and now a GABA Charitable Trustee). I wanted to buy a house in Grey Lynn and Johnny said "you must go see Steve Rogers". Steve had recently become a mortgage broker with Mortgage People, where he still works today. Steve's network of clients from that time remains strong to this day and many are our friends today. Steve took a shine to me and after I'd bought the house, one day brought me a bunch of flowers.....I'd forgotten and was not home!!! But despite this bad start, we began seeing each other. This cumulated when I was invited to Steve's mid-winter Christmas party in June where all his friends kept coming up to me and telling me what a wonderful man he was. It was quite a campaign and I fell for it and that night we slept together for the first time and I did not go home!!! We've been together pretty much ever since. The original offer of a job, which brought me back to NZ in the first place fell over, and here Johnny Givins, who at the time was producing Queer Nation, comes back into the picture in a big way. I went to Johnny with an idea drawn from my love of sailing and history. "Let’s make a series that follows Captain Cook's discovery of NZ in 1769"......and so 'Captain's Log' was born, which we got funded and broadcast with TV One, later winning Best Documentary Series of the year. By this time I was on the GABA Executive and making even more great friends that we have always shared. One of the closest is Richard James who is now himself engaged to the lovely Matt. A few years later we started a small production company to deliver educational programming that would be broadcast but also streamed on the internet. Back then internet video was totally new, it was before YouTube!! So we were pioneers. This company is now e-cast which streams videos for the business community and through a Trust runs eTV which delivers recorded TV and educational videos to Universities, Wananga, Polytechnics and Schools in NZ. It’s been 8 years of hard work but the companies are now a success, but this would never have happened without Steve's total support for what we were doing, the support being on all levels including years of financial inputs. We've now renovated two houses here and share a love of creating beautiful gardens. We've got two dogs, Pipi at 13 years and Siri only 13 months old who we both love. When Pipi first came adopted from the SPCA Steve said that he wanted a cat as he preferred cats. There is still no cat!!! We share a great love of dogs and what they bring to our lives, a love of travel (we try to go somewhere every year) and entertaining our friends. We like the same music, movies and TV shows. And very importantly we both have hugely supporting and loving families who are integral parts of our lives. We do have differences which we celebrate as it’s important to have some things that each person can do themselves. Steve loves playing Bridge and is very good at it, whereas I am not a big game player. I on the other hand love sailing and he doesn't, except that Steve joins us when we are anchored and the G Gresham Bradley, with GayNZ.com - 16th March 2014
Credit: Gresham Bradley, with GayNZ.com
First published: Sunday, 16th March 2014 - 10:07am