How We Met
Oggi and I met over ten years ago when a friend of mine asked if I could help cover a couple of her weekend shifts as a hostess at an Italian restaurant that Oggi’s family owns and that he managed at the time. We talked a little, but nothing ever came of it.
Fast forward to May 2018 — Oggi reached out to me on social media (or as the kids would say, “he slid in my DM”) and we exchanged numbers. We went out a couple of times, but at the time I really wasn’t looking for a relationship, so we stayed friends. We had such great conversations though and he always had such a way of making me laugh.
We ended up dating other people over the course of the next few months, but we always kept in contact throughout. He would always joke and tell me he “has to chase the girl he wants to marry” when referring to me, and I’d always roll my eyes and tell him he was crazy.. lol little did I know! He was always so sure that we’d end up together though. We ended up running into each other on New Year’s Eve, and my best friend and future MOH told me “That’s the guy you’re going to marry! You guys have such great chemistry.” It wasn’t until a few weeks later that something just clicked and I let my guard down and gave it a try, and we’ve been inseparable ever since!
How They Asked
I turned 30 in December, and months before told Oggi I just wanted to spend my birthday on vacation somewhere. I said maybe Miami when he suggested we go to Paris instead. He had said he just wanted full reign of planning for the first night. I had a feeling he might propose, but that first day and night we ended up being so jet-lagged we decided to just go to a local cafe for dinner and go to bed. There was a public transportation strike going on at the time so he had paid a car service to take us to dinner the following night at Les Ombres with the most beautiful view of the Eiffel Tower. After dinner, he had a really bad headache so we ended up heading back to the hotel for a little. At that point, I assumed my suspicions were wrong and maybe we weren’t getting engaged on this trip after all.
After about an hour Oggi felt much better so we ended up going to the iconic Four Seasons George V for champagne and dessert so we could celebrate the start of my birthday at midnight. They had this amazing snow globe light exhibit by Jeff Leatham up for the holidays, which was filled with a ton of hanging lights. I was admiring how beautiful everything was when I turned around and Oggi was down on one knee about to propose! He told me how much he loved me, and couldn’t wait to spend the rest of his life with me. I said yes, and it was one of the happiest moments of my life! I later found out he had planned to propose the first night in front the Eiffel Tower, but once he took the jet lag into consideration he changed his plan, but couldn’t secure any of his original vendors that were part of the plan so it was a surprise to him of when he would do it later in the trip. Even though it wasn’t his original plan, it ended up being even more magical than I could’ve imagined!