"For some reason I had a really strong feeling that the winning Lotto ticket was going to be sold at Papakura. I was even telling my workmates," she said.
"I couldn't stop talking about it all week and on the way down I turned off to go to Papakura, and Paul just went 'Oh my God'."
Once they had picked up the ticket - their third in that weekend's mammoth $40 million Powerball draw - and a "bit hungover" from celebrating the night before, the pair went to bed.
The excitement of the proposal quickly turned to panic, when they woke in the middle of the night to thick smoke filling the downstairs part of the house.
"I looked at Paul and he was standing there like a stunned mullet, so I ran to try to find some water. I grabbed a bin-liner out of the bathroom and raced back and forth four times to put it out."
The house was badly smoke-damaged, and the fire had burned through the floorboards.
The cause of the blaze is not known.
Lucy called her mum to deliver the news, and joked that the next time she called it would be because she had won Lotto.
Little did she know that was exactly the next call she would make.
"Here I was on my birthday, hungover and sitting in a house that stunk like smoke; we were just thanking our lucky stars that it hadn't been worse."
Luckily the Lotto ticket survived the fire and the couple sat down to watch that night's draw.
"It took 20 minutes to convince Paul that we'd won. So much had gone on, we really just couldn't believe it at all."
Two of the seven tickets that ended up winning first division were sold in Papakura.
"Normally we wouldn't tell people about this sort of thing but it's just so crazy, you really couldn't make it up. It's just madness."
Lucy said the big win had only just sunk in for them and they planned to spend the money on repairing their house and on their wedding in Nelson early next year.
"I told Paul he was lucky he put a ring on it when he did, as I was the one who bought the winning ticket and put out the fire.
"I'm quite the good luck charm, really."
