Wedding Date on Aug 17, 2019

When Isabella “Bella” Carlstrom and former AFL Women’s player, Moana Hope, met, they had an instant Hollywood-style thunderbolt connection. Bella saw Moana across a bar on March 25, 2017, and tells Vogue she went directly up to her, not having any idea about her future wife’s sporting status. “I had just come back from living in India for four years,” Bella says, “so I had no idea that women had started playing AFL. I was at a bar on Chapel Street [in Melbourne] and noticed Moana (having no idea she was a professional football player) and went up to her, and the rest is history. It was an instant connection and we have been inseparable ever since.” Bella reflects that almost from the moment they met, it was clear their futures were entwined: “It honestly didn’t take us long before we started planning our future together. After we met we spent almost every day together. Within a month, we had told each other that we loved each other.” On October 4, 2018, just over one year after the couple’s fateful meeting at the bar, Bella popped the question to Moana in a truly heartfelt way, proposing in a place with special significance to her future wife with an engagement ring she had created herself. “I always knew that Moana wanted to be proposed to. So I made damn sure that I got there first,” Bella shares, adding: “I have done my diploma in jewellery design and manufacturing, so I made her engagement ring. I know how important Mo’s father is to her and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to ask him as he passed when Mo was young. I wanted to propose at his gravestone, as that is where Moana goes to visit him... We had Champagne (our favourite), flowers, vegan cupcakes and, with a little help from our friends, we had Beyond by Leon Bridges playing.” Moana tells Vogue she staged her own proposal to Bella during their engagement party: “Later at our engagement party I had Bella’s dream ring made by Ron Bensimon and got down on one knee in front of our family and friends and proposed to her too.”