A fairytale marriage ended in tragedy when a newlywed was killed in a helicopter crash in the Drakensberg on Saturday.
Ingeborg Gows, 53, and Reubin Gows, who had been married for a month, were taking a site-seeing tour of the Champagne Valley with two friends, James Stewart, who was piloting the helicopter, and Gary Sherry, when things went horribly wrong.
The victim, who was a German national, and Stewart were sitting in the front of the helicopter while Sherry and Reubin Gows were at the back.
They had just refuelled at Cathedral Peak Hotel and were taking off when an apparent engine failure sent the helicopter plummeting to the bottom of a ravine metres away from the hotel.
On Sunday a distraught Gows, of Amanzimtoti, spoke about the woman he loved.
"I am devastated at losing my wife. I still can't believe that it is a reality," he said.
Describing how they had met, Gows said when he first saw Ingeborg he knew that he wanted her to be his wife.
"It was as though everything said yes, this is the woman who is to be your wife," he said.
Gows said the reason they were flying was because his wife loved the outdoors. "She was madly in love with South Africa and wanted to capture everything about our country on film."
Sherry said it was a miracle that they were alive.
"The take-off had gone according to plan and we were rising over a fence and approaching the ravine when the helicopter suddenly lost power. James yelled at us to grab on to something before the helicopter started plummeting to the ground."
Midlands police spokesman Senior Superintendent Henry Budhram said police and aviation authorities were investigating the cause of the crash.