Nigel Teles­ford

Free­lance Writer

Love found its way on­to a Car­ni­val stage yet again, when a young cou­ple who met at Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val two years ago agreed to be­come hus­band and wife. The ex­trav­a­gant pro­pos­al live on stage at Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val 2023 in­volved the lat­est drone tech­nol­o­gy and was pro­duced by Lu­naLite Lim­it­ed.

Paris Vazquez and Shiv­ani Ramjit met briefly in 2021 at Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val, the first Car­ni­val to re­turn af­ter the pan­dem­ic.

Vasquez told the amaz­ing sto­ry: “I met Shiv­ani in Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val 2021 as we were both play­ing with Gen X Mas. Our in­ter­ac­tion was short and sweet, but af­ter­ward we kept in touch by phone. How­ev­er, she lived in New Jer­sey and I was liv­ing in Flori­da at the time. Over the course of two months, our dai­ly con­ver­sa­tions made it ev­i­dent to both of us that we shared a spe­cial con­nec­tion.”

Vazquez said he planned a first date in Flori­da, which had to be post­poned due to her fa­ther’s un­for­tu­nate ill­ness. He then made a spon­ta­neous de­ci­sion to sur­prise her with a vis­it to New Jer­sey.

Need­less to say, mak­ing the trip and spend­ing just about two hours out with her be­fore re­turn­ing to his home so­lid­i­fied the con­nec­tion and their ro­mance con­tin­ued to grow via “count­less hours of phone calls and video chats”.

Then, on Christ­mas Day, he de­cid­ed to take things up a notch and some­how con­vinced so­ca stars,Patrice Roberts and Kees Di­ef­fen­thaller to help him ask her to be his girl­friend.

They asked on his be­half and she def­i­nite­ly said yes and thus their jour­ney as a cou­ple be­gan of­fi­cial­ly.

Fast for­ward to 2023 and Vazquez is now to­tal­ly in-love and plans an elab­o­rate show to ask Shiv­ani to mar­ry him on the Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val stage. But as fate and Car­ni­val en­er­gy would have it, Shiv­ani al­most missed the en­ture thing!

She re­called: “In the im­me­di­ate mo­ment, I was to­tal­ly over­whelmed with emo­tion in the most pos­i­tive way. I’m not typ­i­cal­ly the cry­ing type and I nev­er saw my­self as the per­son to cry dur­ing a pro­pos­al, but it re­al­ly took me by sur­prise ac­tu­al­ly though. Fun­ny thing is... I al­most missed it by not pay­ing at­ten­tion.

“I saw the Trinidad flag pop up in the sky as he point­ed to it, and I just said, wow, that looks so cool and then pro­ceed­ed to turn away. It wasn’t un­til he lit­er­al­ly held and point­ed my head up at the sky and I be­gan to see the words ‘will you’ form­ing, that my emo­tions took over and I was filled with so much hap­pi­ness be­cause I knew what was com­ing next,” she said.

Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val was in full swing at this point, with bands head­ing to the stage just be­fore 8 pm and a huge con­cert in progress but the thou­sands of mas­quer­aders, Car­ni­val lovers, Caribbean de­scen­dants and cul­ture lovers, stake­hold­ers,

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ven­dors and or­gan­is­ers as­sem­bled all looked to the sky in uni­son as “Will You Mar­ry Me Shiv­ani” il­lu­mi­nat­ed the night sky along­side a Tri­ni flag and a beat­ing heart.

An au­di­ble gush of emo­tions echoed through the Mi­a­mi Dade Coun­ty Fair and Ex­po­si­tion Grounds, fol­lowed soon af­ter by ap­plause, as most as­sumed her an­swer had to be yes af­ter a pro­pos­al like that!

“Well of course, I said yes!” she said.

“In terms of sus­pect­ing any­thing,” Ramjit re­vealed, “I had my sus­pi­cions but he did a great job of keep­ing it on the low. When we first got to Mi­a­mi for Car­ni­val week­end, he dis­ap­peared for three hours with his friend Chris and men­tioned to me that there was an­oth­er friend meet­ing up with us on Car­ni­val day, who I know is not a so­ca or Car­ni­val fan so once he said that, I def­i­nite­ly raised an eye­brow, but it wasn’t enough for me to con­firm it all in all.

“I’m glad the se­cret was kept though be­cause there’s noth­ing worse than a spoiled sur­prise. I’m grate­ful for his love and that the mo­ment was ab­solute­ly per­fect.”

As far as Vazquez is con­cerned, a vis­it to T&T is now at the top of his list, but the mu­sic, the cul­ture and one Tri­ni woman in par­tic­u­lar has al­ready cap­tured his heart and mind com­plete­ly:

“Your cul­ture is beau­ti­ful,” he en­thused. “From the peo­ple, food and the mu­sic... it’s a spe­cial cul­ture... one that needs to be pro­tect­ed and pre­served. I’m look­ing to learn as much as pos­si­ble, so that one day when we have our chil­dren, they will un­der­stand com­plete­ly who they are and where they come from. So­ca mu­sic is love. I can’t wait to see the day so­ca mu­sic takes over the world!”

Fol­low @2socalover­sat­car­ni­val and @over­timett for up­dates on this Car­ni­val ro­mance in progress.