Olympian, pin-up Amanda Beard will marry in April

Olympic swimmer and Playboy pin-up Amanda Beard will marry her photographer fiance Sasha Brown in April.

"We got engaged on Christmas day," Usmagazine.com quoted Beard as saying. "It was really simple. We decided to do Christmas by ourselves in our house in Tuscon (Arizona). He had a little Tiffany's box, and it was hidden in this Santa statue that we had — his little sack — and it was perfect."

Beard said a simple proposal was much better than an over-the-top alternative. "If he tried to do anything extravagant or crazy, he was like, 'You're so snoopy, and in my business, you'd figure it out, so I had to throw it in with Christmas'," she said.

Beard also plans to keep her wedding simple. "We're not going to have a wedding, just a small ceremony at the end of April," she said.

The couple has been dating for three years. Beard was earlier linked, wrongly, with Australian swimming champion Ian Thorpe.

Beard appeared naked in the soft-porn magazine Playboy in 2007. She also took her clothes off ahead of the Beijing Olympics last year for a campaign against fashion furs.