I'm stone in love with you! See man spell out proposal in 6ft high letters on the beach

Steven spelled out his proposal in 6ft high letters on the beach at Hawthorn Dene – one of the places the lovebirds used to visit when they first got together back in July 2020.

"When we first started dating, we'd often walk there, and there is a space from the cliff top where you can see the beach,” he said.

"I decided to spell out ‘Helen, Will You Marry Me?’ using the rocks on the beach so she could see it from the cliff top – and casually invited her for a walk.”

The literal labour of love took about two weeks to complete – and 36-year-old Steven, from Ryhope, lived in perpetual fear that it might be vandalised or re-edited in his absence.

"I kept having to nip back and make sure no-one had dismantled it or changed it,” he said. "I didn’t want to get her there only to find the wording had been rewritten.”

Fortunately, Steven’s role as a social media marketing manager who often works late shifts allowed him to sneak out of the house while 34-year-old Helen – a managing director at a fabrications firm – was at work.

"It was a walk we used to go on every few weeks or months, but we hadn’t for a long time, so it was dead easy to keep it from her,” he said.

"Hiding the fact I was nipping out to work on it was the hard part.

"I would come back and have to wipe off all the sand. Sometimes the dog came with me and I’d have to give him a wash down to get the sand out of his paws.”

Eventually the time was right to suggest to Helen that they revisited one of their old haunts. She was taken aback to see the message laid out on the sand – and careful not to get too excited.

"She was just beginning to say ‘Isn’t that nice?’, then she saw the ‘Helen’,” said Steven. “She said ‘Is this for me or another Helen, because I don’t want to embarrass myself?’, then I got down on one knee and she knew that it was real.”

Helen even laid out her answer in stones under Steven’s message.

As well as worrying that the message might be vandalised or edited, Steven was also terrified that in a day and age wheen everything gets shared on-line, someone might spot his handiwork and spoil the surprise on social media.

Amazingly, no-one picked up on what he had done until after the event, when Sunderland wedding photographer Helen Russell spotted the words and posted them on her Instagram feed.

A friend-of-a-friend put her in touch with the happy couple - and now she will be on duty when they tie the knot at Healey Barn in Northumberland in July 2024.

Steven even appears to have started a trend, with several more proposals having appeared in the same spot since the couple’s big day.