Rachel Recchia is toasting her former co-Bachelorette, Gabby Windey, on her recent nuptials to now-spouse Robby Hoffman.
“My heart has never been happier,” Recchia, 28, wrote via her Instagram Stories on Wednesday, March 5, reposting Windey and Hoffman’s wedding photos.
Windey, 34, and Recchia were both leads of The Bachelorette in 2022, and each ended season 19 single after failed engagements to Erich Schwer and Tino Franco, respectively. Months later in August 2023, Windey publicly came out as queer and started dating 35-year-old comedian Hoffman. The couple confirmed earlier on Wednesday that they secretly wed on January 11.
“We had just evacuated from the fires. Literally cue Rihanna, ‘We found love in a hopeless place,’” Windey recalled to Cosmopolitan, referring to the natural disaster in Los Angeles. “What better time to get married than right now? Because if the world is ending, we want to be with each other.”
The pair evacuated to Las Vegas, staying at a hotel near a wedding chapel.
“Gabby turned to me and she went, ‘Should we get married?’ And look: I’ve been proposing since the day I met her,” Hoffman told the outlet. “We got to this room and it’s like out of a mafia movie, 12-foot ceilings, a separate bedroom from the living room, that type of hotel. And we were like, ‘Whoa.’ And then Gabby floated getting married.”
According to Windey, she liked that the wedding plan was her idea.
“Robby was literally ready to propose three weeks in and I’m always the one pumping the breaks, but when something feels right, it just feels right,” the Bachelor Nation star added. “I think it was better for the both of us that it was my idea.”
Windey and Hoffman’s wedding ended up costing a modest $799 that included a limousine, portraits taken by photographer Big Nate and a service officiated by a minister named Reverend Nature, who wore bright red sneakers.
“I actually can’t believe how perfect it was. It was the best wedding I’ve ever been to,” Hoffman gushed. “We got to spend our wedding truly together. We love to be together.”
Months earlier, Windey told Luxury Handbag Shopping that she hoped the couple were “destined to be together forever.”
“Well, if it was up to Robby we’d be engaged, like, six months ago,” the Traitors season 3 star exclusively quipped to Us in September 2024. “It’s nice to kind of do things at your own pace and really listen to yourself and know that there doesn’t have to be pressure. It’s, like, if we’re destined to be together forever, which I hope, then everything will happen naturally. We’re both so busy in our careers [and] have other good distractions and other things to work on. It just feels really balanced.”
