Grimaldi, 32, is engaged to her boyfriend, Canadian businessman Josh Wolfe, she announced on Instagram on Monday. The romantic news comes after Grimaldi told her Instagram followers on Sunday night that the couple was on their way to a road trip to Quebec City.
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for the fiancés. “It was absolutely beautiful!” the bride-to-be gushes. “data-reactid =” 31 “> In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, Grimaldi reveals that Wolfe, 35, posed the question at the top of Saint-Louis Gate” in what was an intimate, beautiful moment that was candlelight. An accordionist performed songs, including “A Whole New World” Aladdin, for the fiancés. “It was absolutely beautiful!” the bride-to-be gushes.Grimaldi adds that the proposal completely surprised her.
“I knew we would eventually get engaged, but I had no idea it would happen if it did,” she explains. “Josh is the first person where I am, where I am at complete ease and where I have never had his love for me. I am ready to say YES! I am the happiest woman!”
Wolf helped design her beautiful ring, with a 1 carat oval diamond with two side stones, set on an 18K yellow gold band, by Teresa and Sons, a local jeweler in Montreal.
The couple has been dating for a year and a half, after Wolfe slipped into Grimaldi’s social media DMs. They talked on the phone for a few weeks while she was out of town (they both live in Montreal) and had one of their first dates in New York City. “We booked flights without ever having experienced it!” Grimaldi recalls. And the rest was history.
“I always feel at home when I’m with Josh. His love and mercy for his family is something I have always admired about him and something I have always sought in a partner,” says Grimaldi. “I love how much he values family and that he loves to spend quality time all together. That’s how we both grew up and one of the many reasons I grew a strong bond with him from the beginning. Who knew mine person in the same city as me all these years! “
Wolfe recognizes this sentiment. “I knew Vanessa was the one after the first lunch on Sunday I had with her family in Saint Leonard,” he tells PEOPLE. “It was then that I realized just how important family was to her, as it is to me. I felt so welcome, and just grateful for the idea that she could one day become my extended family. I felt like I was at home. Also. the first time she made me her pasta sauce. It’s something else! “
Looking ahead, the lovebirds will celebrate with a small engagement party at their favorite Lebanese restaurant, Garage Beirut, in Montreal. (Part of the bill will be donated to Lebanon’s Red Cross to fight those fighting in Beirut as a result of last week’s explosion.) The COVID-19 pandemic means wedding plans remain up-to-date the-air, but Grimaldi dreams of a quieter affair nonetheless.
“Younger Vanessa would have liked a typical Italian wedding: big and lots of guests,” she says. “Well, I’m looking for something small, simple and intimate with my closest friends and family.
Grimaldi continued a relatively private life in Canada after the performance, founding No Better You, which helps build lounges for schools with special education programs, and launches their own lifestyle YouTube channel.
Would she want her wedding for TV to be filmed? “I love memories that we can look back on,” she says. “I really want a private and intimate wedding and that parts of it are recorded for us to keep as a memory and to see for our future children one day.”
“After my experience on the show, everything happens for a reason,” she says. “They are both beautiful, confident and intelligent women, who I am sure will make the decisions that best suit them. I look forward to seeing and supporting their travels!”
