Clare Crawley just took home silver at The Bachelor Winter Games — with her ring, that is. Benoit Beauséjour-Savard popped the question (in French!) and proposed with a blinding Neil Lane engagement ring during the World Tells All special. So how did the gorgeous oval-shaped diamond come to be? The jeweler opened up to PEOPLE all about the entire design process.
As the go-to designer for Bachelor Nation proposals, Lane typically spends time with the fiancé-to-be to create a ring perfectly suited for the couple. But this time the process was a bit different.
“This is the first time I’ve ever designed a ring for a couple I haven’t met in person,” Lane tells PEOPLE. “I remember Clare from a few years back and knew a little about her but knew nothing about the couple. The groom and I usually get to spend a lot of time together. This time, we essentially had to design the ring via telepathy! We traded calls and text messages to create the perfect ring, a true expression of his love for her.”
But there were a few things lost in translation while consulting via text message. “I had to work that much harder to draw from our conversations, the essence of Benoit and Clare’s connection,” Lane says. “In the beginning, Benoit asked me for a ‘race track’ or ‘football stadium’-shaped diamond. It took me a moment to realize he was talking about an oval cut!”
Lane ended up designing and delivering the ring in less than two weeks, and he says creating rings for The Bachelor for 10 years has “prepared me for anything.”
“The Winter Games is a completely new part of the franchise and proved to be a fun and challenging way to test my mettle,” Lane says. “How quick, creative, and adaptable can I be?”
And once, again he designed a ring the couple was very happy with. “He didn’t have the one I was looking for, so he built a custom one, which is amazing,” Beauséjour-Savard said. “It was exactly what I asked, and he did the best job ever. It blows my mind. It was the first time that I had to shop for this, and it will be the last one for sure. It’s kind of stressful, but I’m glad she likes it.”
RELATED: The Most Jaw-Dropping Celebrity Engagement Rings
On the show, Crawley ended up breaking things off with Beauséjour-Savard to get to know German contestant Christian Rauch better. After things didn’t work out with Rauch and Crawley left Winter Games, Beauséjour-Savard reconnected with Crawley with a text asking how she was doing after leaving the show.
Bachelor Winter Games’ Clare Crawley and Benoit Are Engaged!
Things progressed (away from the cameras) from that text eventually to Beauséjour-Savard’s surprise proposal during the World Tell All special. “It’s overwhelming, it’s crazy,” Crawley told PEOPLE. “Going on these Bachelor shows is a huge risk and you don’t know the outcome. It’s scary, but it’s a risk that you have to take to get the good in the end.”
Beauséjour-Savard also didn’t anticipate such a whirlwind end to the Games. “I didn’t expect this,” he told PEOPLE. “I was heartbroken on The Bachelorette: Canada but going back on this show I had an open mind. I was realistic that there might not be someone for me. But like you’ve seen on TV, I had the biggest crush ever on her. it wasn’t a crush, it was developing into something really deep and strong.”