By
Nadia Mendoza and J J Anisiobi
Last updated at 11:46 AM on 4th March 2012
Lisa Maxwell didn’t get engaged in a conventional way and she wants her wedding day to be as unusual.
The Loose Women star has decided to say ‘I do’ in a countryside wedding this summer after proposing to her partner Paul Jessup.
The Bill star, who played DI Samantha Nixon in the ITV1 drama between 2002 and 2009, honoured the leap year tradition when every fours years the female is meant to get down on one knee.
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Long term partners: Lisa and Paul plan to marry this summer in the Cotswolds with an unusual ceremony
The 48-year-old told The People: ‘I want something that is true to us and isn’t swamped by people’s nerves because they don’t know what to wear or how to behave.’
The couple have revealed that will marry in the Cotswolds in an intimate ceremony with just 25 guests.
Lisa’s mother Val, 70, will give her away even though she hasn’t had the chance to ask her yet.
She told the newspaper: ‘I care more about my guests being happy than I do about being able to say I had the perfect dress, perfect flowers.’
The television presenter has never married and so it will be her first time down the aisle.
However, it’s about time she says ‘I do’, with Lisa and sculptor Paul having been together since 1997.
The couple have one child together, their daughter Beau, 12, who was born in October 1999.
A nervous looking Lisa was egged on by co-hosts Andrea McLean, Carol McGiffin and Jane McDonald as she punched the air in victory after revealing the news in front of the ITV1 cameras.
Lisa actually proposed in the privacy of their own home, while still wearing her pyjamas.
Relocating to the Cotswolds: Lisa and Paul have just moved into a new house
She said: ‘It’s
something we’ve talked about, but we haven’t really had a proposal. And
I thought I’d say to him, once and for all, ‘Will you marry me?’ And he
said, ‘Of course I will Nobby!'”
The petite blonde continued:
‘Unfortunately I wanted to try and get a picture of the moment I
proposed, but I was in my jimjams and we were in bed. Well I wasn’t even
in my jimjams!’
Lisa gushed: ‘I love him, I want to
spend the rest of my life with him. If you’re watching sweetheart – you
mean the world to me and I’m so happy. I didn’t realise I would be, but
there you go.’
Explaining the build up to her
proposal, Lisa said: ‘For the last couple of weeks I’ve been joking with
Paul (about February 29)… And he was like, “Yeah, very funny. Haha,”
and just ignored it.
Brave! Lisa Maxwell proposed to Paul Jessup revealing she popped the question in her ‘jimjams’
‘I’ve been sniffing around him for a
couple of weeks, as you do. So yesterday, and he knew I was thinking of
maybe doing something, and maybe not doing something, because things are
fantastic in our relationship. Fifteen years in June, we’ve been there,
seen it, done it.
‘We’ve got a beautiful daughter.
There are no surprises. We’ve just moved to the Cotswolds and we’ve
bought a house and we’ve done it up, and it will be the last house we
ever live in.
‘So we kind of know where our lives are going and there seemed very little reason to change that.
‘But the fact that we knew where our
lives were going, I was thinking “Well, what’s the big surprise? The
only thing that we don’t have is marriage.” So yesterday, I proposed to
Paul.
‘We were in bed at the time and I’d
spent all day trying to get it right and all day trying to be a really
lovely girlfriend because you don’t want to have a row the day you’re
going to ask that big question.’
Egging her on: Lisa was surrounded by co-hosts Andrea McLean, Carol McGiffin and Jane McDonald
See the Loose Women proposals special here
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Lisa Maxwell reveals unusual plans for her summer wedding in the Cotswolds