OUR STORY
She grew up on sun-drenched Sydney’s North Shore, and he was a California boy, born and bred. He was the pragmatist, and she was the dreamer. Worlds apart, yet similar in all the important ways.
It all started at Gulfstream...
Diana and Jason were set up on a blind date at Gulfstream in April 2018. Diana drove down for the day from LA, and Jason had just spent the entire day hunting for the perfect Ducati up and down the California coast. He thought about cancelling the date, but ultimately decided to go. As he watched Diana demolish her crab cakes from across the table, he regaled her with tales about hating Paris and sushi (see exhibit A of Jason seeming to enjoy Paris, there's no proof that Jason has ever enjoyed sushi in the past 6 years, you'll just have to take Diana's word that he said it).
A love of pasta and cats was born.
Gulfstream became Javier’s (classic), and just as Diana and Jason had settled into a dark booth to talk, their double date companion insisted on crashing a birthday party. Begrudgingly, they went along with the plan. Little did they know that not only had they met their life partner that night, Diana would go on to become best friends with the girl at the center of their host’s party crashing plot.
Jason had plans to continue his motorcycle hunt the next day, so they agreed to reconvene the following week. Jason was at the spartan stage of his life as a man, and sent her on her way with a banana, the only food item in his pantry. Jason and Diana texted each other once per hour all week and he told her the world was their oyster. Diana showed up for their Friday date night at Cucina Enoteca (legend has it you’ll still find them there every other Friday), and neither could bear to end the date until Sunday morning rolled around.
Despite claiming to hate cats, Diana came out of her shower one day to find Jason curled up with Bagel on her couch, asleep. Together, they rescued a kitten (Olive) from the mean streets of Crenshaw.
"Finding our perfect peak"
Diana grew up skiing and hoped that Jason would love the alpine adventures and apres ski life as much as she did, so for his birthday took him to Whistler, one of her favorite ski resorts. One ski village at a time, Jason’s skiing abilities grew, as they discovered Aspen, Mammoth and Park City together, in search of their favorite mountain town. On one such trip, Jason turned to Diana and said "we're finding our perfect peak", and it stuck, not only literally, but figuratively, as a motto for their relationship and lives. Diana showed Jason Bali, her favorite part of Indonesia where she had spent 4 months shooting a travel series for the Discovery Channel, and in turn, he showed her St Tropez. England, Spain, Mexico, Canada, Dubai, the Maldives, Costa Rica, followed, and most importantly Italy. Jason didn’t know it yet, but they had been venue scouting for a long time.
Full circle.
On date 3, Jason insisted on sitting across from (not next to) Diana in the booth, as he had some very important questions to ask her. Where did she see herself in 5 years? She said she wanted to be engaged to the love of her life. They moved in together in July of 2019, and to Newport Beach together two months later, fulfilling the last of Jason’s childhood yearbook aspirations. Time to write some new goals together! One celiac diagnosis, a global pandemic, the biggest entertainment industry strike in decades, a boatload of career challenges and growth, one new American citizen, and a lot of growing up later, they took a trip to Spain and Italy. Despite their best poker faces, the hotel staff were subtly...off, and when Jason announced that he was wearing a sportcoat to a BBQ so as to avoid the mosquitos, the plot only thickened.
Turns out no Tuscan BBQ was actually eaten that night (that was just the cover), only pasta. Jason proposed on the hillside overlooking the vineyards and they had dinner in their privacy of the vegetable garden he and the hotel staff had lured Diana here under the guise to see. There was in fact radishes in the soil. They decided to go to the restaurant for a nightcap, and somehow ended up dancing the night away with the best strangers. That restaurant manager had moves. The story came full circle on a magical night in Umbria, when they celebrated over off-the-menu chocolate soufflés (Diana's favorite dessert in the world) and copious champagne with some of their favorite humans.
Italy is such a special place to us, and we would love nothing more in the world than to share that magic with our chosen family.
