Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi are known for their thoughtfulness when it comes to celebrating their love.
For example, Portia gave animal-lover Ellen a namesake gorilla sanctuary as a gift to mark the comedian's 60th birthday in January. So when the anniversary of their first date, which took place in 2003, rolled around a few days ago, Ellen wanted to do something special for her wife of 10 years just to let Portia know how much she means to her.
But things didn't go quite as planned…
Ellen sweetly booked a plane to fly past their beachfront home trailing a banner with the number "15" and a red heart on Dec. 1 — only the banner was so small, it was too hard to read! "Portia and I started dating 15 years ago today. I hired a plane to fly by the house with a banner that said 15 with a heart. I should have specified the size," Ellen captioned a video of the fly-by, on which you can hear one of them laughing "I can't see it!"
Portia posted the same video and added a humorous caption of her own: "My wife surprised me with this for our 15th anniversary [of our first date]. Sometimes bigger is better…." she wrote.
As always, the women saw the humor in the situation. Back on Aug. 16, Ellen shared a video on Instagram that celebrated her love for Portia — that one was much more serious and emotional as it included unseen footage from their wedding day in 2008.
"Ten years ago today. This was such a special day for us," Ellen captioned the footage.
Portia previously told Oprah Winfrey in a 2009 interview that she knew she was in love with Ellen "when I first laid eyes on her" at a party in 2000. "It took me three years to actually tell her how I felt about her," Portia explained. "Because I was on 'Ally McBeal' at the time and I was not living as an openly gay person. I was closeted and very, very afraid that if I talked about being gay, it would be the end of my career. So I wasn't about to date the most famous lesbian in the world."
They continued to see each other at various events for a few years then ran into one another at a photoshoot. "I felt weak at the knees and I was overwhelmed with how I felt, but then it took me about 10 months to get the courage up to actually do anything about it," Portia explained.
Ellen and Portia walked their first red carpet together as a couple at a Golden Globes afterparty in January 2005.