The jolly hockey sticks girl (and school sweetheart) who’s marrying Ed Sheeran
BOTH pupils at Thomas Mills High School in rural Suffolk stood out for their exceptional talent — in very different fields.
Edward Sheeran, an awkward-looking boy with a mop of orange hair, had obvious musical ability and was a terrific singer; pretty brunette Cherry Seaborn, in the class below him, was an ace on the hockey field.
The pair developed a close friendship during their time at school, and some said that Ed had a crush on Cherry — although she had a boyfriend. Then life intervened and they went their separate ways. Cherry earned a degree in molecular biology and represented England in the Under-21 hockey team. She now works as a senior consultant in risk advisory at prestigious accounting firm Deloitte.
Meanwhile Ed, as everyone knows, achieved success in a rather more glamorous field soon after leaving school in the small town of Framlingham. His songs have sold in their millions and his third album, Divide, went straight to No 1 upon its release last March.
Forbes magazine estimates that in 2015 alone he made £40 million. Money and fame, however, have not made him happy, and in one recent interview he spoke about how he shut himself up in his London home for four months, struggling to cope with the pressures of his celebrity. So it’s somehow fitting, as well as romantic, that he found his way back to his teenage crush, the sporty Cherry Seaborn.
As he wrote in his song Perfect, said to be about her: ‘We were just kids when we fell in love / Not knowing what it was / I will not give you up this time’.
And indeed, on Saturday he revealed to his 19 million followers on Instagram that the pair are engaged. ‘Got myself a fiancé just before new year,’ he said. ‘We are very happy and in love, and our cats are chuffed as well.’ (They have two, Dorito and Calippo). The announcement was accompanied by a touching photograph of 26-year-old Ed with his arms around Cherry, planting a kiss on her cheek.
No details of the wedding have been forthcoming, but it’s possible it will be held in the Framlingham area, where Ed has a property and where both families have roots. Ed’s parents still live in the town, and Cherry’s are about ten miles away.
According to one showbusiness source, Sheeran is believed to have turned down £3 million from the magazine Us Weekly to cover the nuptials. The couple instead plan on a relatively ‘low key’ event, with not many celebs — although Ed’s close friend, pop star Taylor Swift, is likely to be an exception.
ED WILL want some formality, though — he once commented that he’d carefully planned out the placing of his 60 tattoos so he could easily hide them on his wedding day. ‘ You will never see them in a suit,’ he said. ‘I want to get married and look great.’
Ed and his fiancée are clearly besotted, although they seem like chalk and cheese. Creative Ed tends to present a rather shambolic appearance to the world, while Cherry, 25, is a well-puttogether, athletic young woman with a sharp business mind.
But what Ed loves about Cherry is that she is so normal and unstarry — although there are some eccentricities in her family, such as the fact that her middle name is Paean, meaning ‘ a song of praise or triumph’, while her brother Charlie is actually Charlemagne.
Ed’s song How Would You Feel (Paean), from Divide, appears to be a reference to his fiancée’s moniker. Its romantic lyrics (‘I’ll be taking my time, spending my life / Falling deeper in love with you’) suggest he was thinking about the long term early in their relationship.
In an interview in February last year, he said the song had been written some time previously, explaining: ‘I said to my girlfriend, “What’s your favourite song on the album?” She said: “You’ve forgotten it existed and I have it in my email because I’m the only one you sent it to.” So she picked it out from like, a year-and-a-half ago and I ended up recording it.’
So, who is Cherry Seaborn? She grew up in a charming period property in a village outside Framlingham with her mother Ann, father Matthew, an architect, and younger brother. Charlie is in the same business as his brother-in-law-to-be, writing film and theatre music.
While Cherry was one of those lovely, grounded girls who is friends with everyone, young Ed was a bit of an awkward teenager. ‘I was quite a weird kid when I was little,’ he said. ‘I wore big glasses, had hearing problems, had a stutter and I had ginger hair.’
He lived with mum and dad, Imogen and John, and brother Matthew, in Framlingham, but dropped out of school at 16 to seek his fortune as a singer. At the outset he busked and slept rough under an arch near Buckingham Palace.
Cherry took a more orthodox route to success. After completing her science degree at Durham University, she travelled to America to take a qualification at the Master of Management Studies programme at Duke University in North Carolina. This allowed her to pursue her passion for hockey as part of the university’s prestigious Blue Devils hockey team.
Mark Barreca, whose daughter Hannah played with her, said: ‘Cherry is a wonderful young lady, really nice and a great hockey player. Ed Sheeran is a lucky guy.’
Hockey was a big part of Cherry’s life at Duke, and she gave some insight into her personality when she spoke to the university magazine. ‘ I’m a massive team player,’ she said. ‘I don’t really do it for myself, the thing I like the most is being a part of something that’s bigger than just you and that you can give something that makes other people happy and makes other people succeed.’
In the summer of 2015, she was still in America when Ed visited the country. Coincidentally, it was around this time he had been in the doldrums about fame and the lack of freedom that came with it.
In an interview last year, he said: ‘I stayed inside for four months. I watched movies. I couldn’t just go out and get a pint of milk. I always wanted to maintain normality. I was ordering takeaways and putting on a lot of weight.’
He was recovering, also, from the breakdown of his relationship in the February that year with Athina Andrelos, who works as a manager for Jamie Oliver’s food company. The couple had been photographed on yachts in various exotic locations, living the sort of life expected of a pop star — but all the sunning and fun didn’t suit Ed.
In 2013, a fling with singer Ellie Goulding, similarly a British pop sensation lauded for her songwriting, had also come to nothing.
AND so Ed was keen to reconnect with friends from the old days. He and Cherry got in touch, and soon the pair were being spotted out and about at baseball matches and suchlike.
In the U.S., he was probably more able to go about his business without being mobbed by fans, giving the relationship time to blossom.
Last year Ed said in an interview: ‘This has been the first time I’ve ever actually had the time to fall in love properly. I’ve always got into relationships very passionately — I’m a redhead and also Irish.
‘I’m ready, let’s go — tour bus babies, little fat, chubby babies that just walk around,’ he said.
In 2016, the pair went off travelling for five months. They visited Japan, New Zealand and Ghana before heading to Iceland to see the Northern Lights. While there, Ed had a horrifying mishap when he put his foot in a boiling geyser, which melted the skin off his foot.
‘I had to get choppered out. I missed the Northern Lights as I was in hospital,’ he said.
When the pair returned, Cherry took up her position at Deloitte in London. Early last year she joined a hockey club in South London.
Cherry’s addition to the team has been quite exciting for anyone who likes both hockey and Ed Sheeran — he has been seen cheering on the sidelines at one or two matches.
The couple are believed to have been living together for about a year — Ed has a property in London, too. They’ve been spotted once or twice browsing around Portobello Road Market, but tend to shun celebrity parties.
The only time they could have been accused of courting attention is when they arrived at presenter Jonathan Ross’s house for a Halloween party last year in matching pink coats and hats.
Cherry’s stabilising influence is undoubtedly good for Ed. He’s accident prone; he once accidentally smashed a bottle of beer into his hand and the stitches split open while he was playing guitar.
Recently, he told of how Cherry had to nurse him after a bike accident last October. She even ‘had to brush my teeth’, he said.
There are other troubles she may have helped him through, too. He has been embroiled in a stressful legal suit with songwriters for the track Amazing sung by X Factor winner Matt Cardle, who claimed he had copied the song ‘note for note’ for his hit song, Photograph. A $20 million law suit (£13.8 million) was launched against Sheeran. The case was settled last April; no details were released.
But all this, and solitary nights at home consoling himself with pizza, is behind him. Cherry’s sports regimen has rubbed off a little on Ed. In an interview last year, he revealed he has started doing exercise — ten minutes a day, ‘ intervals of 30 seconds sprinting and 30 jogging’.
Sheeran is currently in the midst of a world tour so when he and Cherry will fit in the wedding is anyone’s guess. His lucky number is 17 and Cherry’s is 19, so perhaps it will be on the 17th or the 19th of an upcoming month.
Ed has said he would like to send his children to his school, Thomas Mills. He has a tattoo of its emblem above his belly button.
So who would bet against the happy couple ending up settling back in Framlingham, living quietly in the country — and, with the small exception of his vast wealth and fame, enjoying a life almost like the old days?