Rita Ora and Taika Waititi are celebrating their third wedding anniversary this August. I’m impressed that they’ve made it this long. Good for them! Now that we’ve had years to digest their kooky energy, I admit that they’re cute together. I remember how quickly and secretly it all went down. Rita leaked that they got married but we didn’t get any details or see pictures for a year, when she and Taika did a spread and interview with Vogue for their first anniversary.

In that article, Taika mentioned that Rita was the one who proposed to him! Now, we have the full story. While talking to host Davina McCall on the Begin Again podcast, Rita revealed that not only was she the one to get down on one knee, she did an elaborate staging to make sure Taika got the proposal that she’d always wanted.

Rita Ora is opening up about giving her husband the proposal she would’ve wanted for herself. The “RIP” singer shared candid details of the romantic moment she set up for her hubby, director Taika Waititi, during a recent appearance on the “Begin Again” podcast with Davina McCall.

“I got the [wedding] bands made, I didn’t want anything too flashy. I got some bands made that have something really personal attached to them inside, that only we know about. I just did the whole thing,” she said.

“We were in LA. I rented out a hotel room in Palm Springs. A really nice fancy one ― filled it up with balloons and cake,” Ora explained, adding that they were “heart-shaped balloons and a heart-shaped cake, because I’m basically doing what I would have wanted for mine.”

The singer continued, “I’m holding the cake, like ― holding a bloody cake ― and the balloons are all around us. He walks into the room and he’s like, ‘What the hell, is it Valentine’s Day?’ I’m like ‘Nooooo!’ So anyway, I get down on one knee…”

She said he had a befuddled reaction, asking her, “‘What is happening?’” She thought maybe that meant Waititi wasn’t ready for her to pop the question because she didn’t genuinely didn’t know if he was going to say yes or no.

“Maybe he doesn’t want it. Maybe he’s OK to just be in a relationship, which was fine with me, too. But I just wanted to lock him down. And I did!” she said.

“And he said, ‘Absolutely! What the hell, get up!’” she shared.

Ora and Waititi got engaged in 2022, a year after the two began dating. The two got married just a few weeks later in August 2022, in front of an intimate group of loved ones.

“There were about eight people there — just close friends and family, and parents on Zoom,” Waititi said in an interview with Vogue in 2023. Waititi’s two daughters, Te Kāinga o te Hinekāhu and Matewa Kiritapu, were also in attendance. Waititi shares his daughters with his ex-wife, film producer Chelsea Winstanley.

[From HuffPo]

I love hearing stories about women proposing. Previously, Rita had been vague about the proposal details, only sharing that it was unconventional. My knee jerk reaction was that it sounded a little pushy based on her comment about wanting to ”lock him down.” Then I thought about it and it makes perfect sense. She is the type of person who knows what she wants and then goes for it. This seems to suit their dynamic quite well. She wanted to be proposed to a certain way, and she made it happen. I also don’t hate that she went against gender norms because we should destigmatize that sh-t.

I’m also impressed that they didn’t share pictures or details for a year, and that she didn’t even elaborate for another two years. Their unconventional, kooky energy is growing on me, and I’m rooting for them now. I’m going to be disappointed if they ever break up.

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