Man Surprises Fiancé by Proposing with Custom-Made Engagement Suit: 'The Sweetest Thing' (Exclusive)
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/justin-senense-anu-gupta-custom-engagement-suit-101624-1f7f43cab2ba4fae973f7ec4dde173f3.jpg)
10/20/2024 10:30 AM
Anu Gupta thought he was helping a friend, but Justin Senense was determined to surprise his fiancé with a proposal — and this time he would be the one to ask
Courtesy of Justin Senense
From left: Anu Gupta and Justin Senense- Justin Senense proposed to his fiancé Anu Gupta with a surprise custom-made suit in September
- "It was probably the sweetest thing anyone's ever done for me," Gupta tells PEOPLE
- Gupta was even able to wear the suit — which has ties to his book — to his launch party days later
Anu Gupta had no clue his fiancé Justin Senense was up to something when he had him try on a suit days before his book launch party.
The New Yorkers had been engaged for nearly a year at the time, and Gupta thought he was just helping Senense's friend, Project Runwayalum Caycee Black, model for her upcoming menswear line.
"I was like, 'Oh my God, I'm so flattered to be asked,' " the 39-year-old author of Breaking Bias: Where Stereotypes and Prejudices Come From – and the Science-Backed Method to Unravel Them tells PEOPLE.
Yet unbeknownst to Gupta, Black and Senense had a secret plan: the actor and personal trainer was determined to surprise the lawyer with a proposal — and this time he would be the one to ask.
Senense shares that he even came up with an excuse to explain why Black only needed Gupta's help.
"I was like, 'Well, I'm shorter,' " he recalls. "I was like, 'You're kind of more generic, like 5'8", like 5'9," more everyone's size. So Caycee is going to build the suit around you, and then I'll still wear it."
Using a secret WhatsApp conversation, the two friends quietly planned the suit behind Gupta's back.
Finally, on Sept. 19, as the lawyer was dressed in his custom-made "emerald-ish" suit handcrafted by Black and her team, Senense popped the question. The ensemble even featured an embroidered version of Senense's proposal on a handkerchief.
"Of course, [I] started tearing up," Gupta adds. "It was probably the sweetest thing anyone's ever done for me."
Courtesy of Justin Senense
Anu Gupta's engagement suit.Senense says the touching moment happened 10 months after Gupta surprised him with a proposal at a Diwali celebration with family and friends last November.
"Maybe I always just put it out there that I wanted to be the one to get proposed to if it were to ever happen," Senense says.
Do you have a sweet story the world needs to know? Send the details to love@people.com for a chance to be featured in Real-Life Love, People.com's series dedicated to sharing extraordinary connections and heartfelt gestures.
But when Gupta described how he wanted Senense to propose to him, the 40 year old shared that he pushed back: "You can't tell me how to propose to you if you want me to propose to you." He wanted to do it his own way.
Then one day Senense was having lunch with Black, who he met in an acting class in 2016, and asked if she ever makes anything for engagements. She responded by saying that she might want to explore menswear and the idea hit him.
"I was like, 'Would you make me an engagement suit for Anu? ' " he says, explaining that Gupta always wanted to buy a suit for his book party, but never got around to buying one.
"His favorite thing is kindness," he explains. "I know that's basically what his book is about, bringing compassion to us ... to how we deal with bias in our world, essentially. So I felt like it would be a cool thing of wrapping himself in love, but also something just to commemorate not only his work but our relationship."
Black tells PEOPLE that the "pressure is always on" and even though she's been working for decades, "there's always that moment where you're like, 'What if they f------ hate this?' "
But she charged forward, designing a suit in a nod to the couple's "East meets West" background (Gupta is of Indian descent while Senense is Filipino).
Courtesy of Justin Senense
From left: Caycee Black and Anu Gupta."We wanted it to be something he could wear, and the colors kind of go back [to his book]," she explains. "It's not super matchy-matchy, but it blends to his book colors, which is kind of nice as a brand."
In addition to the handkerchief, the lining of Gupta's suit included his favorite poem by Naomi Shihab Nye called "Kindness" — another tie-in to his book. And in the end, they were blown away.
For the couple, the suit has come to resemble their future together.
Says Senense, "Clothing really does not only change how you feel, but it's almost like stepping into that clothing is like you're stepping into this [different] space in your life."
For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!
Read the original article on People.
