Nina Dobrev and Shaun White Are Engaged! Inside Their Oh-So ...
Shaun White made a few different plans to propose to Nina Dobrev—but they kept being thwarted. The first, during their summer vacation, was scrapped after Nina injured her knee in a dirt-biking accident. Then, he thought about early November, when they were in Cape Town for The Earthshot Prize Ceremony. But he could tell that Nina thought it might happen in South Africa—because, well, all her friends kept asking if it was going to happen. And here’s the thing about Nina, says Shaun: She’s an extremely organized person who is rarely surprised, but she loves being surprised. He had to surprise her.
So White decided to propose on an otherwise mundane week in late October. He had it all set up: the date, location (The Golden Swan restaurant in New York City), flowers, a photographer. For weeks, he moved Nina’s future five-carat Lorraine Schwartz ring around their home so she wouldn’t find it—first into the safe, then his sock drawer, and eventually, all the way in the back of the tool shed. (“The garage?” Nina exclaims when Shaun tells me his hiding spot. He shrugs: “I was like, She’s not coming out here.”)
A few days before he was set to pop the question, Nina told him she wasn’t feeling well. She wanted to rest up before Africa, and didn’t want to go out—at all—until they left. But this time, he refused to reschedule. Instead, he decided to do something drastic. He had his publicist send Nina a fake invitation for an intimate CFDA/Vogue dinner with Anna Wintour at the Golden Swan in New York City. Nina accepted. “He made the invite look so legitimate,” Nina says, laughing.
Photo: Andrew Arthur
So on a Friday night in late October—after a styling session with Kate Young (which she believed was being covered by the magazine, but had actually been arranged by Shaun)—Nina walked up the stairs to the West Village restaurant’s private room in head-to-toe Chanel. She was a little on-edge: Vogue events are known for starting exactly on time, and she was running a few minutes late. “I was in a panic that Anna’s waiting for me,” she says. Her fear was exacerbated by the fact that it was dead quiet: surely, cocktail hour must be over if she couldn’t hear anyone talking or moving about?
Yet when she opened the door, she realized the only people in the room were a photographer and Shaun, wearing Ralph Lauren under an arch of white roses.
“I went into shock. I just froze and stared at him,” she says. Then, she went, “No.” And then: “No, no, no!”
Photo: Andrew Arthur
They were denials of happy disbelief: After some gentle encouragement from Shaun, Nina met him amid the flowers. (“I knew she was nervous because when she’s nervous she’ll make jokes. She’s like, ‘So, wait, Anna’s not here?’” Shaun says, laughing.) Nina doesn’t remember exactly what happened next, professing she blacked out. But she does remember this: “He said all the right things.”
After she said yes, friends came and joined them for caviar and champagne. They celebrated until one in the morning. “Eventually we realized—other than the caviar—we hadn't eaten anything. So we ordered Shake Shack and dumplings to the Golden Swan,” she says.
Photo: Andrew Arthur
They kept the news to their inner circle for the next few days, with Nina taking off her ring every time they left the house. But, as she tells me, “I don’t want to take it off anymore!” You can feel her smile over the phone. So here’s Vogue breaking the news. Nina, go forth and flash that diamond everywhere.
