Shropshire Star

Panto proposal: Boyfriend gets on stage to ask Cinderella actress to marry him

“I couldn’t have asked for anything better,” said Ellie Sanderson-Nash.

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A very romantic pantomime proposal

One Cinderella got her happy ever after moment when an actress found herself being proposed to during a pantomime performance.

Ellie Sanderson-Nash was on stage performing in Buttons: A Cinderella Story when the show started to go off script.

It was the end of the performance and Ellie was ready to begin the night’s final musical number when her castmate Jamie Barwood announced: “I’ve got a little special guest today who wants to ask a very special question.”

Ellie, 26, told the Press Association. “I thought at first there might be a celebrity. I wasn’t really sure what was going on. I looked around not sure what to do.”

But there was no celebrity guest. Instead, her boyfriend Harry Thatcher, 27, appeared on stage – and that very special question turned out to be a proposal.

He spoke quietly to Ellie, told her how much he loved her, then got down on one knee to whoops and cheers from the audience.

“When he got on stage, I kind of knew what what was coming,” Ellie said. “I thought a proposal was in the offing, but I thought it might be at New Year.

“My stomach was flipping.”

Luckily for everyone concerned, the moment at Islington’s King’s Head Theatre was captured on camera and is now taking social media by storm.

Nobody was more surprised than the show’s director, John Savournin, of Charles Court Opera, who was unaware of the unique twist being given to his show that evening.

He said: “I didn’t know it was going to happen, so it was a real surprise to me too!

“It was one of those rare moments of pure joy that they shared with the audience in the King’s Head. One woman was punching the air with joy.”

The occasion was doubly special for Ellie because both of the couple’s families were in the audience to witness Harry pop the question.

“He’d asked me once before what would be the worst proposal I could think of and I said a restaurant, just because it’s so cliched and surrounded by strangers,” Ellie said.

“But this wasn’t a room of strangers, both our families were there – I couldn’t have asked for anything better.”

The couple have been together for three years having met at the Royal College of Music, where both were training to be opera singers.

And Ellie thinks they’ll take their time before tying the knot.

“We think it might be October 2020,” she said. “I don’t want to have a really short engagement, I want to enjoy it.”

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