Sparks flew — literally — when Ryan Merriman proposed to girlfriend Kristen McMullen on New Year's Day. The Pretty Little Liars actor (who played Melissa Hastings' husband Ian Thomas on the ABC series until 2012) was with his now-fiancee in New Zealand when he popped the question, and immediately after she said yes, a huge fireworks display lit up the night sky above them.
Merriman, whose 30th birthday is April 10, dished to Us Weekly about the romantic proposal at the April 9 Hollywood premiere of his new film, 42, about baseball legend Jackie Robinson. "There is this awesome thing called Sky City, with a Stratosphere tower, and they light off about $300,000 worth of fireworks at midnight," he explained. "As soon as I gave her a kiss and proposed, the fireworks started going off. It was kind of like a movie."
It didn't start out like one, though — at least not a very good one. The actor told Us that the evening didn't exactly go as he had planned.
"It was a very hectic night," he admitted. "We started out at this terrible bar. It was supposed to be tiki torches and beautiful, but it was not at all. There was a terrible DJ. [It] ruined the whole night."
From there, he said, the couple moved on to another venue, a club, but he couldn't even hear himself think, let alone talk. "I was like, 'There's no way I'm doing it in here. I will regret it for the rest of my life,'" he told Us. "So we ended up running to Sky City, the harbor…I did it on the fly of the moment. Thank God it worked."
Merriman and McMullen haven't gotten too far into the planning stages yet, but he wants to do whatever she wants to do. "It's her day," he said. "I'd marry her on a beach. I don't care. We could go to Vegas. She's a very classy woman. They say if mama's not happy, no one is happy!"
