Where is a TV cameraman when you need him? Ben Higgins’ new fiancée, Jess Clarke, shared photos of his romantic proposal but admitted she couldn’t recall exactly what the Bachelor alum told her when he asked her to marry him.
“I don’t remember everything you said, but I know that I said yes,” the 24-year-old captioned three photos on Instagram on Saturday, March 28, that showed the Bachelor alum, 30, getting down on one knee on a grassy hill beside the water in Franklin, Tennessee. “I woke up in a dream today and I get to live in this dream every day from now on (eeeep).”
She also shared a series of Instagram Stories showing her friends reacting to her happy news as she revealed her engagement ring via FaceTime.
“Congrats you guys!!!” former Bachelorette Desiree Hartsock commented on Clarke’s post. “Omg so happy for you!”
Season 4 Bachelor Bob Guiney wrote, “WOOOOOHOOOOO!!!! This is the best social not distancing post I’ve seen in a long time!!! Congratulations @jessclarke_ and @higgins.ben !!!!! Yeeeeee.”
Us Weekly broke the news earlier on Saturday that the season 20 Bachelor had popped the question to his girlfriend of more than a year.
The next big step in their relationship came two months after Higgins told Us that he would “definitely” be proposing to Clarke in 2020.
“I don’t think that’s a question,” Higgins told Us in January. “We’re great. It’s fun. It’s just healthy … I think she would say the same. Our relationship is healthy. I’m a better version of myself, a more free version of myself than I’ve been in a while.”
Entertainment Tonight reports that Higgins had been planning his proposal for months but he said that “everything changed” amid the coronavirus pandemic and his plans to propose in NYC were scrapped.
The couple, who have been self-quarantining with Higgins’ parents in Denver, drove to Franklin on Friday, March 27, so they could see her family, who secretly knew about his intentions.
“I went back to a pond behind her house, and we had set it up with sunflowers near a bench. It’s right in their backyard, but a little hidden. I proposed and her family and mine were watching from a distance, and then we all celebrated together,” he told ET.
“I was super nervous. She’s my best friend, my partner and I love her. I was nervous to kind of do this whole thing in front of her,” he said, admitting that he started tearing up before they even reached the proposal spot. “I wasn’t anxious, it’s just a big moment!”
Clarke, who met Higgins after he DMed her on Instagram, told ET that the proposal was “exactly how I would have wanted it to be. … It was great. It was perfect. I couldn’t imagine it a better way.”
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