Sex And The City author Candace Bushnell, famous for her stories of the busy singles scene in New York, is to get married.

She will marry New York City ballet principal dancer Charles Askegard, after an apparently whirlwind romance.

Statistically, married women and single men are the unhappiest

Candace Bushnell

The couple met two months ago, and Mr Askegard proposed to Ms Bushnell, 42, at her Connecticut home last week.

Ms Bushnell confirmed the plans to the New York Post: "Yes, it's true - we're planning the wedding."

The wedding is set for 4 July and is expected to be a small ceremony for family and friends in Nantucket, reported the Daily Telegraph.

Ms Bushnell made her reputation as the creator of the hit US TV series Sex And The City.

She had been regarded as a cynic about marriage.

Bushnell was a successful columnist

Earlier this year she told the Daily Telegraph: "Marriage is a male invention.

"Statistically, married women and single men are the unhappiest."

The TV show, first broadcast on the HBO network in the US, has been shown on Channel 4 in the UK since February 1999.

Bushnell began her Sex And The City column in the New York Observer from 1994 to 1996, and later turned the stories - frank accounts of the sex lives of single female New Yorkers - into a book.

TV producer Darren Star - the man behind the considerably more innocent Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place - had the idea of making the TV series, which has been a major ratings hit in both the US and UK.

Mating habits

"I read Candace's column and I knew her and I told her I wanted to do something with it - I liked the cynical view she had of about people in New York in their 30s looking for relationships," said Mr Star.

Sarah Jessica Parker won a Globe for her part in the show

Bushnell returned to similar themes in her 2000 novel Four Blondes, a quartet of stories on the mating habits of wealthy, sex, status and media-obsessed New Yorkers.

The TV show picked up two Golden Globes TV awards in January.

Sarah Jessica Parker was awarded the best actress title for her role as the sassy newspaper columnist Carrie Bradshaw, and the show picked up the best TV comedy award.