Over The Moon’s Buying Director Emilie Ghilaga got engaged to her fiancé, Trevor Carlisle, at the end of 2021. And after hearing the news of the proposal firsthand via Slack—Ghilaga’s a boss lady through and through—we had to get all the details on how he asked, the ring(s), and what’s next in the wedding planning process.
Native New Yorker Ghilaga met the San Diego native in the city through mutual friends, but they didn’t really click until they both found themselves in Costa Rica in 2019. He was visiting Ghilaga and their mutual friends in Nosara, where she built a house and lives part-time. At the end of his four-day trip, he made his move after hiking to the top of a waterfall. “He kissed me, and I pushed him away,” Ghilaga recalls on account of nerves. He confessed that she was the most fascinating woman he’d ever met, and if anything, he’d love to be friends.
Of course, they spent the next three months getting to know each other nearly every night on the phone, and their feelings started to grow. In January of 2020, Carlisle visited her in Costa Rica for their birthdays, which are six days apart. Coincidentally, it was also her first week at Over The Moon, and being a wedding website, he asked her if she had any ideas of what her own nuptials would look like. She hadn’t secured any big plans in her mind, but she had always loved the idea of the newlyweds leaving their reception at midnight or 1:00 a.m. and going straight on their honeymoon. “For my wedding, I want to do that same thing,” she says. “I always thought that was so cool, and it doesn’t happen anymore.”
The day after celebrating her birthday at a restaurant in San Jose, Carlisle asked Ghilaga to be his girlfriend…and two months later, Covid hit. She was in Costa Rica in early March and decided to “temporarily” move in with him in New York to be closer to her father. After months in the city together, they rented a house in Connecticut with her dad and eventually made their way back to Costa Rica. “It was seven months instead of two weeks,” she recounts. “There was no ‘moving in,’ the world was just on hold…We just wanted to be together.”
After nearly two years together, Ghilaga and Carlisle purchased a house in East Hampton. To celebrate closing on their first property, he told her he wanted to have a beach bonfire. They drove onto the sand with their pup, Pupita, in tow, and he set up the fire under the post-sunset sky with a few planets peeking through beneath the moon. “You really felt like you were on your own planet almost,” Ghilaga says of the setting. “To be amongst the stars, I really felt more connected to my parents in the moment.” (Her father sadly passed away in early 2021.)
As Carlisle nearly finished setting up the evening, Ghilaga questioned whether something special was about to happen. As soon as the thought left her mind, he kneeled and asked if she’d do him the honor of becoming his wife. “I kind of blacked out,” Ghilaga says.
He knew she loved Over The Moon jeweler Briony Raymond, so he approached Raymond in the city, and together they chose the Skinny Sloan Ring and had it produced in a week. Carlisle presented Ghilaga with the band and said that they could go back and create anything she wanted for the next ring. “I had all of these family rings from my mother,” she reveals. “I always wanted to design something using her stones and kind of reinventing them.”
“It was just so special…I’m more of a minimalist when it comes to these things anyway, so this pure solid ring that expresses our love and our partnership just felt so perfect,” Ghilaga shares. After saying yes, the happy tears fell, and he told her that he had sent hand-written notes to both of her aunts and reached out to a few of her best friends asking for their permission as well.
The celebration continued with oysters, shucked by Carlisle, his homemade mignonette, champagne, caviar, potato chips, and crème fraîche. “I drank half the bottle of champagne, and I don’t even remember being drunk because you’re just so elated…It’s just such a surreal moment. Nothing can prepare you for it. It really blows your mind.”
Later, when it came time to design the ring with stones, Ghilaga shares, “I wanted it to be different from anything I’d ever seen, but I didn’t want it to be too elaborate either.” She started toying around with the idea of a half-platinum, half-gold band with a diamond, but at the Over The Moon Spring Bridal 2022 shoot, she tried on a sapphire ring from Croghan’s, and it spoke to her. She of course loves Princess Diana’s ring and also enjoyed the fact that it wasn’t a diamond at the center. “I really want something I can wear with a t-shirt and jeans. When I put on the sapphire, it just felt more ‘me.'”
Back at Briony, they began playing with the blue stone and adding tiny diamonds in the band to make it pop and give it a celestial vibe that ties back into the night of the engagement, nature, and Ghilaga’s parents. The particular sapphire being used is from a ring that Ghilaga’s mom wore everyday.
In terms of what’s coming up wedding-wise, the couple are planning a civil ceremony this summer in East Hampton, followed by a backyard luncheon at their home. For the occasion, Patricia Voto of One/Of is creating custom white shoes for the bride. And the larger wedding will take place over a few days in December of 2023 in Nosara. There’s already talks of a beach party, an island ceremony, and an at-home celebration, but nothing’s finalized yet.
Stay tuned for more wedding updates from Over The Moon’s Emilie Ghilaga!
