Her princess title will have to wait at least a little longer, but in the end, Jennifer Wilson got her prince, with The Bachelor: Rome bachelor Prince Lorenzo Borghese selecting Jennifer over Sadie Murray during Monday night's two-hour finale of the ABC reality dating show's ninth edition.
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"I came here for one reason and that was in search for love," the 33-year-old Manhattan resident and Italian noble family member told Jennifer as he informed her of his decision during The Bachelor: Rome's final rose ceremony. "I didn't want twenty-five women, I wanted one." "Oh my god!," the giddy 24-year-old eighth grade teacher from Pembroke Pines, FL replied.
However following in "The Bachelor tradition" of previous bachelors Travis Stork (The Bachelor: Paris), Charlie O'Connell (The Bachelor 7), Jesse Palmer (The Bachelor 5), and Bob Guiney (The Bachelor 4), Lorenzo didn't propose marriage to Jennifer. In fact, similar to The Bachelor 5 bachelor Jesse (and unlike Travis, Charlie, and Bob), Lorenzo didn't even attempt to present his The Bachelor-supplied engagement ring to Jennifer as a "promise ring." Instead, suddenly using the fact that his mother had helped design it as grounds to dub the newly created ring to be a "family ring," Lorenzo presented the Florida teacher with an offer to leave the "Garden of Eden" and "take it on" with him in New York.
"This is a ring that is a family ring, it is a ring that my mother designed -- Jen, I do love you, I love everything about you [but] at this moment I can't ask you to marry me," Lorenzo explained to Jennifer after he dug "way down" into his pocket and took out the ring. "But that doesn't mean anything in the long term. We are in this Garden of Eden [and] I'm at the point where I know I love you -- I love every quality about you -- but I need to get out of this garden and go on Planet Earth and see that these emotions I feel towards you are real as they are in Italy that they are in the United States and if you're willing to take it on I'll be right there with you, and that's what this ring is all about."
"Wow, this is so overwhelming but ya, I think you're incredible, I've fallen in love with you somewhere along the way," Jennifer replied. "I'm elated right now and I want to make it work with you and I see myself as a New York City girl!"
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After meeting individually with each woman, Lorenzo's mother decided that one more meeting was in order -- a joint brunch meal that included Lorenzo and his parents and Jennifer and Sadie and their parents. Although Lorenzo's mother thought her surprise was "a super idea," no one else seemed to feel the same and the brunch proved extremely awkward for everyone. "It is not a normal situation... it's almost like a comedy but it's not... it's difficult and it sucks," a frustrated Lorenzo vented to the cameras during the meeting.
The next day, Lorenzo was faced with a potentially even more awkward situation -- visiting the hotels of both fathers and asking for their permission to marry their daughters. "I feel awkward asking both fathers for their blessing but it's been done in my family for years and I would never ask for someone's hand in marriage without speaking to their father," Lorenzo -- who ironically enough didn't end up asking either woman for their hand in marriage -- explained as he prepared to individually meet with both men.
After meeting with both fathers, Lorenzo had his final one-on-one dates with Jennifer and Sadie, setting the stage for the final rose ceremony in which each woman arrived the castle to separately learn of Lorenzo's final decision.
Sadie arrived first and, following some brief praise of her, Lorenzo cut right to his decision. "In your wish list, you said 'I want to be with a guy that can't fathom to be with another woman' ... the truth is that there is another woman here and at this point I would rather be with her," Lorenzo told the 23-year-old publicist from San Diego. "I don't know what else to say Sadie."
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Sadie initially took the news well. "You know what's best of you... I want you to be happy so I'm trying my best right now to be just mature and gracious," Sadie, whose ability to initially stay remarkably well composed following the news seemed to surprise Lorenzo, replied back. "I'm grateful for everything and thank you, really, thank you... I'm not good but I will be, I'm fine."
However as their conversation continued, Sadie began to get more emotional. "I just don't know why I did this... I just feel so foolish... I thought it was real," a suddenly tearful Sadie told Lorenzo before he walked her back to her limousine. "I know it was a chance for everybody but it was a really big chance for me, I haven't given any guy the real time of day in a long time because I was afraid of getting hurt and now I just got hurt again," the self-professed virgin explained to the cameras during her tear-filled final limo ride.
"Watching Sadie drive away in the limo was by far the worst moment of this entire journey," Lorenzo later lamented as he publicly shed a couple of tears of his own. "Being the bachelor, you know, it sounds like a walk in the park -- 25 girls, make it 27, hang out with them, travel all over the place -- but it's not really like that, you get down to it and there's emotions involved... I feel horrible for it, it's a terrible thing to do to someone."
After The Bachelor: Rome's finale ended, ABC also confirmed a recent report that it has renewed The Bachelor for a tenth edition and revealed that US Navy Lieutenant Andy Baldwin will star in the show's next edition.