Wednesday 25 May 2022 11:04 AM Jacinda Ardern invites The Late Show's Stephen Colbert to her wedding in bid to ... trends now

Jacinda Ardern has invited Late Show host Stephen Colbert to her wedding in a 'shameless' bid to entice American tourists to visit New Zealand. 

The NZ Prime Minister handed the host an invitation to her wedding on air following an impassioned plea to tourists to come and make her country 'whole again'. 

Mr Colbert's invitation was fittingly scrawled on the back of an ad for Air New Zealand's new direct flight from Auckland to New York, due to start in September. 

'It's not a very professional invitation, I tore it out of an InFlight magazine,' the PM laughed as she pulled the folded piece of paper from her pocket. 

Ms Ardern was forced to postpone her wedding to her TV host partner Clarke Gayford in February, following a Covid-19 outbreak in Auckland. 

The PM is currently in the US on a multi-faceted trip built around Harvard University's Commencement address, which she has been invited to deliver on Friday.

Kiwi officials are yet to be advised whether Ms Ardern will be given an audience with President Joe Biden. 

In the meantime, she met with the head of the United Nations, asset managers BlackRock and gave interviews to some of the world's leading travel publications, all on a bumper day one.

The trip has been designed to promote New Zealand to the world and help ailing tourism operators back onto their feet after two years without international visitors.

The appearance on The Late Show was to focus on Ms Ardern's pitch, but the tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas naturally took top billing.