On The Tonight Show last Monday, Simon Cowell squirmed in his seat when host Jay Leno asked him “are rumors you’re engaged true?” After the American Idol judge finally confessed that the large diamond ring his girlfriend, Mezhgan Hussainy, was sporting was indeed an engagement ring that he had purchased in London, Simon joked to Jay that the wedding would take place within “the next ten years!”

But a source tells BettyConfidential the nuptials are going to take place a whole lot sooner than that—the couple is planning to tie the knot in Italy this spring. “It is a perfect time of year for Simon to be able to enjoy his wedding, honeymoon and time off as a newlywed before he starts devoting his schedule to The X Factor,” a source says. (Simon is leaving American Idol after this year’s ninth season and will focus on launching a US version of his popular British music talent show, The X Factor).

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Simon, 50, and Mezhgan, an Idol make-up artist, didn’t have an easy time settling on where to wed. Simon’s mother Julie wanted them to walk down the aisle at her local church, St. Margaret’s in Rottingdean, the East Sussex village near where her son grew up. “I’d love him to get married in St. Margaret’s,” said the 84-year-old. “We have a long history with the church. But it’s up to him and Mezhgan.”

The music mogul worried, however, that a wedding in his home country would become too much of a mob scene with fans. For that same reason, he ruled out getting married in Los Angeles, where Simon and Mezhgan live. Mezhgan, 36, hails from Afghanistan, but that wasn’t an option either, says the source, so the couple narrowed their options down to Rome and Venice before finally settling on Venice. “It’s perfect. It’s romantic and historical,” says the source.