Love not dead for Hamilton couple

Funeral director Stephen McMahon and his bride, embalmer Christy Goodin, are set to get married this Saturday in Hamilton. Photo / Rhys Palmer

When funeral director Stephen McMahon first laid eyes on his future wife, embalmer Christy Goodin, he knew it was love.

She was eating a bun, he was smoking a cigarette.

"Her big blue eyes swallowed me up, a bit like the bun she was trying to eat," McMahon, 31, said.

"She had most of the bun over her and the floor."

Due to the nature of their work, at a Hamilton funeral home, there was not much chance for romance to blossom, but within a month of working together, Goodin, 25, made her first move.

The pair went out on the town. Surrounded by the living, Goodin soon learnt McMahon was far from a killer on the dance floor.

But she fell in love with the fourth generation funeral director and embalmer's personality - especially his sense of humour.

The couple continued to work together for a year, but kept things professional.

Goodin said there were no longing glances over cadavers.

"A lot of the time we were actually in two different places - Stephen would be out the front with people and I'd be out the back embalming."

They both agreed that it wasn't easy to find love in the funeral industry.

"Saying what you do for a job - it's either a conversation stopper or a conversation starter," McMahon said.

But working together meant they understood each other's needs and often unusual working hours.

A lot of their free time was spent critiquing TV shows like Six Feet Under, CSI and Shortland Street, which frequently dramatised death and funerals, they said.

In the last six years the couple have rented five houses, bought their first home in Hamilton and adopted two kittens - Mac and Boss.

In July last year McMahon proposed, and the pair marry today in the Victorian glasshouse at the Hamilton Gardens.