Days Of Our Lives star Jessica Serfaty, 32, is getting married to Italian Ray-Ban billionaire Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio, 28. Jessica shared the big news to her 1 million Instagram followers on July 11, with new photos of the couple laying in bed together after Leonardo’s proposal. Jessica proudly showed off her massive diamond engagement ring on her finger. “HE SAID YES!!! just kidding, I SAID YES! WE SAID YES!,” Jessica wrote, tagging her fiancé. Jessica is best known for playing Sloan Petersen on Days. Leonardo works for his family’s eyewear group EssilorLuxottica, which owns Ray-Ban, Sunglass Hunt, Oakley, and Persol.
The couple told PEOPLE that the engagement happened while they were vacationing at the Amalfi Coast in Italy. “I remember seeing the joy in Leo’s face when he couldn’t hold it in any longer,” Jessica recalled of the moment her partner proposed when they were at dinner. “He teared up at the end. (Sorry Leo, but I had too!) It was spontaneous, exciting and beautiful.” The actress also called her engagement ring “flawless” and “beautiful.”
Jessica and Leo started dating earlier this year. They first met in 2017 at the Cannes Film Festival. “It wasn’t until a couple years later that we saw each other again,” Jessica recalled. “We spent five days along with friends laughing and dancing until the sun came up. That was the moment I knew something more was happening.”
“I saw him a few times in between the next couple of years. It was always warm, but it wasn’t our time,” Jessica continued. “We were both in relationships. So cut to this year, Leo wrote me and said he had been thinking about me and asked if I was single. I was. And just like that… Everything else is history.”
Jessica was engaged once before to Firefly CEO Kaan Gunay. She was also in a years-long relationship with Gossip Girl actor Ed Westwick. Jessica told PEOPLE why her relationship with Leonardo is different than her past romances. “The territory of ‘Engagement Land’ is one I’ve visited before. This time, it’s right. It’s the right time, the right one,” she said. “So the feeling is a feeling of being elated to find home. It’s joy, is wild energy, it’s calming and comforting.”