Love is in the air: Taupō Valentine's Day competition winners announced

The Taupō & Tūrangi Weekender Valentine's Day competition winners Roger Gregory and Iggy Gloy. Photo / Supplied

We asked for your best love stories and we were treated with a wide range of entries. From the romantic and thoughtful, to the comedic and forbidden, there was a little bit of everything. Today, we present the winners of our prizes from Oreti Village, Mt Ruapehu and Nikki's Flowers. Thank you to everyone who entered.

Winner: A lesson in love by Iggy Gloy and Roger Gregory

Prizes:
• Oreti Village - Two-night stay, dinner voucher worth $100, and a bottle of bubbles. Total Value: $750.
• Mt Ruapehu - 2x gondola sightseeing, 2x Pinnacles Restaurant lunches, and 1x bottle of champagne. Total value: $215.

My husband and I recently celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary and we are both teachers at Taupō-nui-a-Tia College.

I (Iggy) met Roger at a staff member's birthday party many years ago. I had recently immigrated from South Africa and knew no one in Taupō. I also had a boyfriend in South Africa who was meant to join me later that year and Roger was in a relationship too. It was not love at first sight!

It wasn't until a few years after this initial meeting, when both of us were single, that our friendship blossomed into a relationship. However, at that time, Roger's three children (from a previous marriage) were teens and we decided to wait until they were ready for him to remarry. He first had to get permission from his children, then from my parents and then put the big proposal into place.

At that time, the staff at TNT were playing Secret Admirer (a bit like Secret Santa). Roger managed to find out who my secret admirer was and for the entire week at school, I was admired by Roger.

At one stage in the week, I said to him it would be ironic if one of us were the other's secret admirer (women's intuition?) which he poo-pooed.

To help your secret admirer, you had to complete a form about your favourite music, food, colour, flower and favourite character in a movie. On my form, I said that my favourite character in a movie is Don Juan de Marco.

On a Thursday, the school has a full school assembly. It was the end of the assembly and principal Peter Moyle had asked the school to stand to finish the assembly when Roger appeared, fully dressed like Don Juan de Marco.

Nervous giggles and an awkward hush seeped through the hall. Roger is really good at accents, and with an accent of a Don Juan de Marco character, he told the assembly that he had fallen in love.

I immediately suspected that whoever my secret admirer was had put Roger up to this, knowing we were dating, but also that Roger is a great actor and wouldn't have minded doing this.

He had a red rose with him and asked me to come up to the stage. I assumed I would collect the red rose. As I reached for the rose, he knelt onto one knee and took out a little black velvet case.

I have been teaching for many, many years now and I can tell you, in my years of teaching, I've never met such silence before. Roger asked me to marry him and I did not hesitate - I said yes!

From silence to a cacophony of claps, whoops, whistles, the whole assembly got to their feet. The Year 9s in the front rows whispered that they thought I was going to faint.

I definitely froze and then Roger said: "take the ring". He was still on one knee and I was a statue. Well, I took the ring, I didn't faint and we both had a surreal rest of the day teaching and a fantastic 18 years since.

Stacey and Richard Goodson took the silver medal in the Taupō & Tūrangi Weekender Valentine's Day competition. Photo / Supplied

Runner-up: Breaking the ice by Stacey and Richard Goodson

Prize: A bouquet from Nikki's Flowers

I was flatting with four other girls while studying in Dunedin, and Richard was in the flat next door. Our flats would often hang out, particularly for 'after-match functions' once we'd played our weekly social netball game.

One Friday night, he came round to my flat and asked if I wanted to go for a walk, which immediately sounded very serious!

He took me up some steps to a lookout with a neat view of the city, before grabbing a hammer from his backpack. How had I been so deceived? Richard seemed like a genuinely lovely guy, I thought to myself, and now he was about to brandish a hammer at me on a dark Dunedin night!

Richard then led me to a spot where he'd made an ice sculpture and handed me the hammer, gesturing at me to smash it before saying: "Now that we've broken the ice, do you want to go on a date?".

The broken ice revealed red and purple jellybeans (my favourites) and flowers that had been placed in a cavity inside the sculpture.

We will be 10 years married in December and have two kids. We look forward to taking them to the spot where Dad wooed Mum over with his creative ice-breaker.

Third place: I penguin you by Qais Sadeed

Prize: A bouquet from Nikki's Flowers

After constantly texting my wife for four years and getting no reply, she eventually gave in and we went on a date.

A year later, I took her to Kelly Tarlton's in Auckland and booked an inside tour of the penguin enclosure.

I had pre-arranged a fake (3D) penguin egg and asked the staff to leave it among all the real eggs.

To her surprise, the staff handed the egg over to me to take a closer look and as I handled the egg I "accidentally" broke it.

There was a ring inside and I got down on one knee and proposed to her. She couldn't register what was happening as she still believed that I had broken the egg and she was in shock.

She loves animals, especially penguins. I had decided to make it memorable for her and all of this was secretly filmed and photographed.

The reason I picked the penguin enclosure was that we both said: "I Penguin You" instead of "I love you". She was initially afraid of using those words and I penguin you was just a way of easing into it without scaring her.

I know it sounds cliche but that's our story. Almost eight years later we have two beautiful children and couldn't be any happier.