Actress Kirsten Vangsness is engaged to
actor/writer Keith Hanson.
The 43-year-old Vangsness is best know
for her portrayal of FBI technical analyst Penelope Garcia on the CBS
crime drama Criminal Minds and its spin-off series Criminal
Minds: Suspect Behavior.
“He's the perfect partner for me and
I feel like we evolve,” Vangsness told PEOPLE of her engagement.
“When you're so into somebody and you get to just mush up next to
them – that's the best part of it.”
She said that she was planning a Harry
Potter / Chronicles of Narnia / dinosaurs / Doctor Who
wedding and hoping to wear a plaid dress on her big day.
Vangsness previously said that she is
“as queer as a purple unicorn singing Madonna.” She dated
television editor Melanie Goldstein for seven years, two-and-a-half
of which they were engaged.
“I was so in love with her,”
Vangsness
said, “but in terms of life growth, what we were both doing
separately was just pulling us apart, not sexually, but in all other
ways in terms of what your dreams are and what you want to go after
and all that.”
She added that she doesn't identify as
bisexual: “If I were straight, I would say I was, but I don't
totally understand it myself. I don't want to have an answer to
something that I don't really have an answer to.”