The engaged couple is excited to start living life together!
Charity Lawson and Dotun Olubeko are ready to start their life together. ET's Denny Directo spoke with the couple on Tuesday, following the season finale of The Bachelorette, which saw the child and family therapist get engaged to the integrative medicine consultant.
"It's a sigh of a relief," Charity told ET of being out in the open. "We're just so excited. This is the moment that we truly anticipated and [have] been waiting on since the beginning, since we ended everything in Fiji."
"Watching all of this back, it's been exciting, a little hard at times, but now that we're just able to just live life normally, that's something that we both want," she added. "... This is what it's all about."
Dotun agreed, telling ET, "You go through these stages, there's the filming stage and then there's after, which we just got done [with], now it’s the long haul."
Keeping the secret of their engagement over the last few months has been a challenge for the pair. While many past couples have been open about donning disguises so they could be seen out in public together pre-finale, that wasn't an option for Dotun and Charity.
"He's so tall. We can't do anything," Charity said of her fiancé. "... We did maybe take a walk or two, but we didn't do anything crazy. It really is too risky."
Now, though, they're looking forward to living life side-by-side. For Charity, that means competing on Dancing With the Stars. During her run on the show, Dotun will working remotely from Los Angeles to be there for Charity.
"We're so grateful that he is able to work remote, so he will be with me," Charity gushed.
While they don't want "a super extended engagement," wedding planning hasn't kicked off just yet. However, the couple does know one thing -- that they plan to have two ceremonies.
"The big question is, is there gonna be a big Nigerian wedding? So I think the answer's yes. We don’t know really when. We haven’t started truly wedding planning," Charity admitted. "We’ve talked about how long we typically want to, like, be engaged. We'd rather get married sooner rather than later. We don't want a super extended engagement, but right now we're just, like, enjoying it all. I think we'll have maybe two ceremonies, a big one and a more intimate one. We'll see. [We're] just kind of throwing things out and seeing what's the best fit."
As for babies, that's definitely on the horizon for the pair.
"We definitely talked about kids," Charity said, "like, when we want to have them, how many, how do you think you be as a parent, what did we learn from our parents' relationship growing up."
When it comes to what their parents think of the whole thing, Dotun told ET that "there's a lot of similarities" between his and Charity's families.
"They've been in contact over the last few months, but yesterday, it was the first time that everyone really got together in person," he said. "Our dads are just in the corners yapping each other's ears already. [Charity's mom] Vickie and my mom over there to talking, so it was really just a beautiful union of everybody coming together."
Watching his engagement play out on TV was an emotional experience for Dotun's parents.
"They were in tears. Obviously, they've been watching our love story, just as America has been," he said. "... They've been watching our interactions and loving it, but to see that moment for them, to capture it, they said there were a lot of tears there. They're just so happy."
Getting along with each other's family wasn't a foregone conclusion for the pair. While things went well when Charity met Dotun's loved ones, it wasn't totally smooth sailing when he met her parents.
"I really have to talk about that because it's like so many factors go into play of that," Charity said of Dotun's introduction to her family in Fiji. "My parents had just got there. They were tired, jet lagged, running on two hours of sleep. So it's all these things and factors that are playing a role into that."
In the end, they couldn't help but feel the love, something Charity herself had been soaking in since her date with Dotun in Oceanside, California.
"That convo changed really the trajectory of that whole journey for me," she said. "There's a lot that you guys actually didn't even see, but what was shown was still so powerful. That conversation lasted for a long time and we shared so much... I think that's why I was brought to tears, it was because he was not just saying 'I see you,' he was saying why he saw me and the things that he saw about me."
"I've never had that shared with me by anyone," Charity added, "so [it was] very life-changing in that sense and that aspect to just have someone that you met a couple weeks ago just really be observant about the qualities that he wants in a wife and a partner and seeing that in alignment with me."
By the time the pair's final date rolled around, Charity felt secure in her decision .
"It was the last chance date that sealed the deal, but I would say it started to really like click for me on our first one-on-one date," she said. "The bungee jumping date brought us so much closer together. Obviously, we're conquering a fear together and it's almost hard to go through that and not feel closer together. For me, obviously around New Orleans and hometowns that was kind of when I was really locked in. I was like, 'Yeah, this very well could be my person.'"
In addition to Charity and Dotun finding love together, they also made history by becoming the first Black Bachelor or Bachelorette couple to get engaged.
"It's an amazing feeling for us to be in this position, to be the ones to kind of deliver this to the world, especially on a scale such as The Bachelorette," Dotun said. "We're just so happy we represented ourselves and our people in what we feel like was a great light... We're just so grateful we were able to make this happen. It just happened by chance. We weren't looking for it. That's the best part."
"It's not something we had a set agenda [for]. This is not a check off the list. This is just our love story," Charity added. "We're just happy that it was shown in its entirety through and through for what it was, which is remarkable. I think a lot of people are gonna take away from our story and what we continue to share."
Despite all the challenges the couple faced to get here -- including Charity's heartbreaking goodbye with her runner-up, the new Bachelor Joey Graziadei -- it was all worth it in the end.
"Probably one of the most eye-opening things about this journey was that I went into it being like, 'Everything is stupid and kind of fake. I'm just not a reality TV person,'" Dotun admitted. "But then I leaned into it, and I realized you can get a lot out of it if you're intentional and she's intentional. It ended up working so well."
"Even after filming we've continued to ask the deep and the hard questions, all that has brought us closer," he added. "I feel like we know each other very well, so now it's just kind of the fun part. It's figuring out the little things... so that's gonna be fun."
Charity agreed, telling ET, "Our love story is a story that I am certain can't be replicated anywhere else... When I'm around him I really, genuinely do feel alive. He is just everything to me."
Charity Lawson's journey for love has come to an end. Bachelor Nation doesn't have to wait too long for more romance, though, as new seasons of both The Golden Bachelor and Bachelor in Paradise will premiere Sept. 28 on ABC.
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