LOVE is in the air for two pensioners, who are due to get hitched after meeting as volunteers at the Bolton Dementia Support Group.

Ernest Holden, aged 76, and Jean Smith, aged 80, celebrated the good news with a surprise engagement party at St Gregory’s social club in Farnworth.

Mr Holden, a former haulage contractor and engineer originally from Astley Bridge, popped the question to his sweetheart in the kitchen of their Tonge Moor home.

However this was no extravagant proposal.

Mr Holden said: “I didn’t get down on one knee. At my age I wouldn’t be able to get back up again!”

The couple started courting three years ago.

The father-of-one, whose wife died in 2010, said: “My wife had died, and I was in a dark place. Jean had been widowed about 10 years at that point, so I just asked her out.”

The couple, who have three children between them, have not yet set a date for the wedding, but say that it will take place in the near future.

Mr Holden added: “People have been joking that we’re going to go to Scotland and elope.”

Colleagues and friends at Bolton Dementia Support Group were delighted for the couple — so much so that they threw a surprise party, and presented Mrs Smith with a tiara.

Mrs Smith, who worked and in catering at Bolton School before her retirement, was presented with an engagement ring by her fiancé just before the party.

Mr Holden said the wedding would be "a small affair" adding that he does not even plan to have a best man.