Nicole Richie has revealed she still has no plans to marry partner Joel Madden.

The couple got engaged in the summer of 2007 after Nicole announced she was pregnant with Joel’s child. They were rumoured to be planning to marry that autumn but the nuptials took second place to her pregnancy (and her 82 minute jail time), and after daughter Harlow was born in January 2008, they said they still wanted to keep focusing on their child instead organising a lavish ceremony.

Now six months pregnant with their second child, Nicole has said they feel committed enough to each other so will only marry when they feel the time is right.

She explained this week: “Joel’s family is actually very Christian and Joel grew up very Christian, and even his idea when he was little was, ‘I’m going to get married and then I’m going to have kids’. [He was] very programmed that that’s the order that everything happens in.

“And of course, when I was a little girl, I dreamed about getting married and that is definitely a dream of mine one day.

“But right now, we’re really really focused on our family, we’re focused on our [charitable] foundation. As far as feeling that need of commitment, we both really have that in each other.

“I think for both of us, we are going to do it because we want to, not because that’s what you do.”

In related news, Joel and brother Benji Madden have both legally changed their surname to match their stage names.

Until earlier this year, the brothers were officially known by their birth surname Combs but last month, Joel filed court documents to officially become ‘Madden’, and Benji followed in his footsteps on 1st May.

A source explained: “Now Joel’s passing it on to his kids, he wanted to make it his legal name too and that spurred Benji into action as well.”