Puppy love! When WNBA star Elena Delle Donne’s fiancée, Amanda Clifton, popped the question last June, their blue Great Dane, Wrigley, delivered the message. “Amanda somehow managed to clip the ring onto Wrigley’s collar,” the former Chicago Sky forward, 27, tells Us Weekly. “She called Wrigley over to us and proposed!”
Realizing “every girl wants to be proposed to,” the Olympic gold medalist later arranged her own pooch-y moment for her fiancée. After a rooftop meal at their Chicago condo, she trotted out black lab–border collie mix Rasta, “I dressed her dog in a wedding dress and wrote on a sign bordered in lights, ‘Marry Me?'”
Delle Donne made non–sports headlines when she first revealed her romance with Clifton, 27 — director of the De11e Donne Academy — in an August 2016 Vogue profile. “I’ve decided I’m not at all going to hide anything,” she said at the time.
Now the pair, who met through friends four years ago, will be the first same-sex recipients of The Knot Dream Wedding. “We were honored they asked us,” says Delle Donne. The Knot, with the help of Brooklyn-based wedding planner Jove Meyer, will plan and host the June nuptials — and fans will choose the couple’s honeymoon destination!
A longtime advocate for those with special needs, Delle Donne recently signed on with the Washington Mystics, close to her Wilmington, Delaware–based family, including her 31-year-old sister Lizzie, who was born blind, deaf and with other disabilities. The couple’s wedding will feature a charity registry allowing friends and family to donate to the Elena Delle Donne Foundation, benefitting the special needs community.
“We were touched by Elena’s relationship with her sister, Lizzie, and all of the work she and Amanda do for the Elena Delle Donne Foundation,” The Knot editor-in-chief Kellie Gould tells Us.“They’re both such compassionate people.”
To keep abreast of Elena and Amanda’s journey to their big day, follow @TheKnot #TheKnotDreamWedding. And you can donate to the Elena Delle Donne Foundation through their charity registry at TheKnot.com.