“Being alone in the Sistine Chapel when nobody else is there is incredible,” says Rago. “It’s almost impossible to take it all in.” But the Room of Tears is what was most special to Rago’s clients. “It’s a very sacred room,” she says. “When you’re standing in that space, and you realize that every pope has passed through that space in privacy—and there you are, alone, being afforded that same moment of reverence … it’s pretty heady stuff.”
Following that up with an indulgent meal at a trendy restaurant wouldn’t have felt quite right. Instead, the couple came off their holy high with a dinner for two in their hotel suite at the newly redone Hotel Eden, with views of Rome unfolding from their living room. Explains Rago, “This was just about being together.”
A Royal Proposal, Medieval-Style
One secret weapon up the Travel Siblings’ sleeve is Hélène Darroze, who runs a restaurant at London’s venerated Connaught hotel. “Something that not many people seem to know is that you can just tell her what you want—everything from a set menu to the cutlery and the china—and she will bring it just about anywhere in London.”
For an Anglophile hedge-fund couple, that meant delivering the full set-up, plus décor by famed florist Larry Walshe, to Wakefield Tower in the Tower of London, where Henry III once lived. Setting up the decoy was easy, says DeBell. “This couple was obsessed with everything British, but medieval history in particular,” he explains. So the bride-to-be was completely unsuspecting when her history-themed tour of London culminated in a visit to the Tower of London. “She thought this was just another part of a private tour—and it really wasn’t a stretch,” he says.
The tour wove through various spaces—the St. Thomas Tower, the Jewel house, and the grand White Tower—before leading to the oldest section of the monument, where a candle-lit Champagne dinner was waiting.
“She walked into this beautiful floral space for a full, catered dinner and a special menu designed around all her favorite foods,” says DeBell. The ring came at the end—and was the one piece of the puzzle that the Travel Siblings didn’t plan themselves. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was modeled after a Princess Diana ring,” he jokes.
The Surprise Party of a Lifetime
Sometimes, romantic gestures come when you least expect them. For one New York power couple—he’s a real estate investor and she’s a fashion designer—it arrived on her 40th birthday. They’d planned a trip to Ocean Club in the Bahamas (recently rebranded as a Four Seasons property), where they vacation regularly. But the routine was broken when their private jet veered course and flew to nearby Musha Island. Arriving at that resort, owned by magician David Copperfield, was only the first surprise.
“She thought it was just her and her husband taking a vacation,” explains Ezon, who planned the getaway. But when they stepped off the plane, all these people were at the dock, screaming: “Surprise!”
It took her a couple of minutes to get over the shock and start recognizing faces, says Ezon, but the crowd included family and friends from all walks of life, some of whom she hadn’t seen in decades. “We flew people in from Atlanta, Los Angeles, and all over the place, including some of her oldest friends from elementary school that she never gets to see and some close friends that had recently moved across the country.”