Reality television star Chantelle Houghton has revealed plans to marry her boyfriend Westley O'Bryan, just one month after the couple publicly announced their romance.
The 42-year-old Celebrity Big Brother winner said her relationship with the 42-year-old garden centre owner has progressed rapidly, with marriage on her mind just one year after they first met.
Houghton admitted she has already purchased a wedding dress after spotting a cream, long-sleeved dress in the window of a bridal shop located near her home.
Choosing the wedding dress
Describing the outfit as a very loosely fitted, cream, long sleeved, simple number, the television personality explained that she fell in love with the gown while driving past the shop premises.
Speaking to OK! magazine, Houghton said: "I've already picked out my wedding dress. This dress was in the window for quite a few weeks. I drove past and I was like, 'Oh my god I love that dress'."
She added that her partner had already seen the gown and approved of her choice. "Westley has seen it and he loved it. He said it was classy and I'd look beautiful in it," she recalled.
The announcement comes 14 years after Houghton divorced her first husband, musician Preston, whom she met during her time on reality television.
Houghton rose to national prominence in 2006 when she won the fourth series of the Channel 4 reality television show Celebrity Big Brother, having entered the house as a non-celebrity tasked with convincing her fellow housemates she was in a pop band.
Recalling her first wedding to Preston
In 2006, Houghton famously married Preston, now 44, just ten months after the pair met on Celebrity Big Brother. Preston, whose full name is Samuel Preston, gained fame as the lead singer of the English indie rock band The Ordinary Boys.
On their wedding day, the couple tied the knot at the historic Dartmouth House, a Georgian townhouse venue located in the Mayfair district of London. Houghton walked down the aisle in a custom satin dress designed by Elizabeth Emanuel, the British fashion designer famed for co-creating Princess Diana's iconic 1981 wedding gown.
Houghton recently revealed that she finally threw out her original wedding dress, explaining that keeping it felt disrespectful to her new relationship. She said it felt "really disrespectful to have the dress in my home when I'm with this guy who I love and want to spend the rest of my life with."
Plans for an intimate wedding
Looking ahead to her future nuptials with O'Bryan, Houghton stated that she wants an intimate event that contrasts sharply with her first high-profile television wedding.
Reflecting on her previous nuptials, she admitted she "didn't even know who some of the guests were" at her first wedding due to the intense media coverage and scale of the occasion.
Discussing her new plans, she told OK! magazine: "This time I would only have immediate family and close friends. It would be very simple and classy with the main focus being that we want to get married not put on a big show for a load of people."
Reflections on past relationships
The marriage plans come after Houghton admitted on the We Need To Talk podcast that she should "never have married Preston" in the first place.
Opening up about her feelings for O'Bryan on the podcast, she said: "For the first time really in my life, I love that man with my whole being. From the very first moment, I just knew. I've not text a man, I've not dated a man, I've not had any sexual anything with a man for very many, many, many years before I met my partner."
She continued: "I was so single by choice but also I hadn't met anyone that I was attracted to. We went out on a first date a couple of weeks ago and everything has been so obviously exciting but so easy, so comfortable, so reassuring, so like he looks after me, I feel looked after."
Houghton expressed how deeply settled she feels with O'Bryan, adding: "I know how much he loves me, I feel it, I literally feel it, I've never had that before that felling of pure love, I've never had it."
Reflecting on her 2006 romance with Preston, Houghton described their eventual split as an "amicable divorce" and admitted that outside the artificial environment of Celebrity Big Brother, the pair would never have dated.
The former couple became engaged in April 2006, four months after leaving the Big Brother house, and tied the knot four months later before divorcing less than a year after their wedding.
She recalled: "We should never have got married, like it should have been what it was. But you know what, we were young, we were on this crazy ride of Big Brother. In real life we would never have met, he wouldn't have fancied me, I wouldn't have fancied him, we just weren't right."
Describing their separation, she added: "It was the most amicable divorce ever, the day I moved out of the house we hugged and said goodbye, there was no nastiness, no bitterness, no hate, no nothing. It was a very easy breakup."
Earlier high-profile romances
Following her divorce from Preston, Houghton was engaged to mixed martial artist Alex Reid, who previously gained media attention during his marriage to glamour model Katie Price.
Houghton shares a 13-year-old daughter named Dolly with Reid, but ended their engagement in 2011 following allegations that he had been unfaithful with other men and had turned their home into a sex dungeon.
She later dated former police officer and Crimewatch television presenter Rav Wilding. The pair parted ways in 2012 after photographs emerged showing them engaged in a public row.
