Waipuna Estate

– Weddings, Luxury Accommodation & Events

Are you struggling to find a unique, awe-inspiring location for your wedding, event, holiday or night away? Allow us to bring your search to an end by warmly welcoming you to Waipuna Estate.

Waipuna is an exclusive, tranquil paradise set in the hills of Tai Tapu overlooking the Canterbury Plains with vistas stretching to the breath-taking Southern Alps. Owned and operated by father/daughter team, Merv Millar and Sarah Smith, there is nothing we love more than being able to aid and advise our clients to enable them to have the very best experience, no matter the occasion.

Established in September 2015, Waipuna Estate began as a luxury accommodation venue welcoming both international and domestic guests. It wasn’t long before we realised our phenomenal, enchanting venue would make the perfect wedding and event location as well. While we started from humble beginnings, fast forward a few years and Waipuna is established as a leading wedding, events and luxury accommodation venue. We are delighted to offer Waipuna Estate for a range of celebrations.

We are passionate about delivering the highest level of service and an unforgettable experience. We listen, support and collaborate with our clients to bring together your vision and dreams. We genuinely love meeting people and offering our expertise and industry knowledge to elevate your event or stay at Waipuna to the next level.

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Sarah

For Sarah, running the events and wedding side of Waipuna is a true pleasure and passion. Sarah often laughs that she “fell” into this industry, but on reflection, it was anything but a coincidence! The opportunity to work with clients planning events and weddings, coordinating and liaising with many to ensure a faultless experience is where Sarah thrives. Being a highly organised and detail-oriented person, Sarah loves to guide clients through the often-overwhelming planning process, helping to reduce the stress as much as possible. In recent years, Sarah has delved further into wedding planning and now offers planning services to Waipuna clients – a role that she truly adores. Being involved in your wedding is a huge privilege for Sarah and the honour is truly never lost for her. 

Having seen many weddings and events at Waipuna, Sarah still gets a huge thrill and sense of pride seeing all the elements brought together to create a fabulous experience at Waipuna. Building a team of highly experienced and caring wedding professionals on the staff at Waipuna is a huge source of pride for Sarah, she loves the care and dedication the team show each and every client. Sarah has a varied background, having travelled and worked in commercial kitchens and hospitality, and more recently recruitment and human resources.

When not at Waipuna, Sarah enjoys spending precious time with her husband and three primary school aged children. She loves cooking, baking, reading a good book and keeping fit.

Merv

Having lived rurally for a good proportion of his life, Merv is in his element at Waipuna with the fresh, country air and vast, open spaces. Merv can often be found tending to the alpacas and chooks around the place, taking care of the grounds or tinkering in the vege garden – he grows some pretty good crops! Merv has extensive experience in the agriculture industry from many years spent as a farmer and then stock agent. He then took his love for meeting people and joined the tourism industry spending 14 years as a coach driver and tour guide throughout the South Island. Merv has detailed knowledge of the region and is on hand to offer our clients advice on their travels, must-visit places and activities and little gems of local information that are only learnt from years spent traversing our great land.

Merv loves to welcome our guests to Waipuna and ensure their stay is everything they dreamed of and more! When Merv is not busy with our guests, he enjoys picking up his guitar, getting lost in a good book, enjoying a good, relaxing yoga session or spending time with his friends and family and being “Pop” to his four grandchildren.