“I went into shock. I just froze and stared at him.”
Congratulations are in order! After five years of dating, Nina Dobrev and Shaun White are engaged!
On Instagram, the Vampire Diaries actor shared the good news with beautiful pictures of the proposal, a stunning arch of white flowers behind them. In one image, Shaun lifts her in the air as they embrace; in the others, the couple smiles together. “RIP boyfriend, hello fiancé 💍♾️,” she wrote in the caption.
The Olympic snowboarder also posted proposal pics with the caption: “She said YES 💍♾️.”
During an interview with Vogue, they gushed over the surprise of it all. Shaun originally planned to propose during the summer, but Nina hurt herself during a dirt bike accident. So, he planned to propose during an upcoming trip to Cape Town instead. However, Nina suspected he would drop the question there, so he was forced to think of something else.
Shaun decided to propose on an otherwise unremarkable day to avoid suspicion and arranged everything from the flowers to the restaurant to photographer Andrew Arthur. But a few days before the set date, Nina said she wasn’t feeling well and that she wanted to stay home until their South Africa trip. Desperate to get her out of the house, he asked his publicist to send Nina a fake invitation to a Vogue dinner with Anna Wintour. With a laugh, Nina said, “He made the invite look so legitimate.”
He arranged a styling session with Kate Young for Nina that she thought was actually organized by Vogue — the cutest thing ever! When she opened the door to the private room of the Golden Swan restaurant in NYC, Shaun was standing beneath the flower arch, waiting for her. “I went into shock. I just froze and stared at him,” Nina recalled.
“I knew she was nervous because when she’s nervous she’ll make jokes,” he said. “She’s like, ‘So, wait, Anna’s not here?'”
Shaun proposed with a 5-carat Lorraine Schwartz ring that he’d been hiding in different spots around the house, from his safe to the sock drawer to the tool shed. “The garage?” Nina asked when she found out during the interview. He shrugged and replied, “I was like, ‘She’s not coming out here.'”
What do you think about their proposal story? LMK in the comments below!