Haley JoyandHope Catherineare gearing up for their roles in a very special wedding — they just don’t know it yet.
Amid celebratingher engagementto longtime boyfriendJoel Schiffman,Hoda Kotbtells PEOPLE the couple have yet to tell their children about the happy news.
“We haven’t told them yet. I don’t know how you do it,” Kotb, 55, tells PEOPLE during an exclusive chat. “We are just going to say we’re having a party to show how much we love each other.”
Schiffman, a financier,proposedto Kotb on Nov. 23 on the beach in Mexico. The mom of two explains that their daughters — 2-year-old Haley and 7-month-old Hope — are so young that they probably wouldn’t quite understand what an engagement means.
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Hoda Kotb/ Instagram


“[Haley Joy is] two. She’ll be like, ‘What? Huh?’ She doesn’t even know what it means,” Kotb says. “And Hope is way too little — but we will tell them we’re going to have a party soon.”
When asked if Kotb plans to have her daughters be flower girls in the wedding, theTodayshow co-host said, “I think so.”
Kotb welcomed home Haley in 2017 and Hope earlier this year in April. In May, Kotb opened up to PEOPLE about becoming a mother again andhow the experience has been differentthe second time around.

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But Kotb relearned quickly, and has been watching her two girls hit some milestone moments. On Monday, Kotb revealed that her younger daughter had crawled for the first time over the Thanksgiving holiday.
“We’ve been waiting for a moment,” she recalled during a broadcast ofToday, explaining that she and Schiffman, 61, had been anticipating the move for some time.
source: people.com