,type=downsize)
Mean Girls actor Jonathan Bennett is engaged to boyfriend Jaymes Vaughan. The 39-year-old star, known for his role as Aaron Samuels, said “Yes!” to his partner in a sweet and intimate proposal. “I was told we were going to be taking family Christmas card photos,” Bennett told PEOPLE. “My sister shouted for me to come outside ‘real quick’ and my F.O.M.O. (Fear Of Missing Out) kicked in, so I ran outside. Then I looked over and saw Jaymes holding a sign that said, ‘We never did find our song, so I wrote it for you.’ That’s when I knew [I] was getting proposed to because it was the same type of sign he made when he told me he loved me for the first time. And then I began to ugly-cry the ugliest cry anyone has ever cried.”
According to Bennett, he and his soon-to-be husband never wholly identified with a particular love song, a situation that has changed thanks to Vaughan. “He wrote me a song! We would always hear songs and think, ‘Oh, that would be our song if just this part or that part were different,’ so as a result, we didn’t have a song that was ‘ours,’” the Ohio native said.
Former Amazing Race contestant and current Celebrity Page host Vaughan revealed to the publication the creative process behind the song. “So while he was in Canada filming The Christmas House for Hallmark, I took a melody that up until now had only be accompanied by chopsticks on my voice notes, and got together with my friend Tanzer, who happens to be a really talented producer and my favorite person to write songs with, and said, ‘Let’s make this magical for Jonathan,’” he explained. “From there, we got a guitar, plucked it out, and just kept building and building and building until we ended up with this huge song that I knew was the one. It’s amazing what magic can happen with a friend and a guitar when you’re trying to create something to tell someone you want to spend forever with them.”
Bennett, who is the host of the Food Network series Halloween Wars, and also has appeared in Cheaper by the Dozen 2, Van Wilder: Freshman Year, and Veronica Mars, said, “It was the best song I’ve ever heard.” The actor said he always loved his partner’s voice; therefore, it was remarkable to hear him singing. “It’s hard to describe what it feels like to have a song written about you that is so specific and that reassures all your insecurities,” he added.
Although the actor says he can’t remember everything that happened because he blacked out during the proposal, his fiancee revealed that “every single part of the song was personal to Jonathan. Every lyric, even the structure of the melody, was designed with how I knew he’d sing it back to me. He has this really cute way of singing things back to me. I just wanted him to feel like the most special person in those three minutes of first hearing the song.”
Jaymes also said he wanted to wed the actor for a while. “I’ve been dreaming about proposing to Jonathan for a long time; I wanted to make sure somebody was capturing it all so I could see his face in that moment over and over again,” he revealed.
For Bennett, there was no space for second thoughts; he knew immediately he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Jaymes. “When I saw Jaymes take a knee, I was so excited I just started hysterically screaming because I didn’t know how to express myself properly. There was a moment when you feel like, ‘Oh, this is forever, I understand it.’ I screamed, ‘Yes’ immediately. Actually, it was, ‘Yes! Of course!’
“I can’t wait to get married!” the actor concluded.
