A LOVE-STRUCK couple who met while delivering newspapers for the Echo are now to tie the knot – nearly 30 years after they lost touch.

Alan Dawson, 43, and Elaine Sunshine, 42, are hard at work organising their Echo-themed wedding.

The cake, invitations and table decorations will feature a front page from 1987 – the year they first set eyes on each other.

They were teenage sweethearts for seven months, before Alan, then 17, moved from Holbeck Road, Basildon, to Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, with his family.

The couple lost touch with each other and both went on to marry other partners. However, Alan said he always knewElaine was the love of his life.

Earlier this year, they started talking on Facebook after both going through divorces and, within a few weeks, Alan had proposed.

He said: “I actually asked her to marry me over the phone, but it wasn’t really planned.

“We were speaking on the phone and I said would you ever consider getting married again – and Elaine replied by asking if that was a proposal!

“I always loved her. She hasn’t changed at all and is as fiery as ever.

“I remember Elaine coming up to Great Yarmouth for my 17th birthday before we lost touch.

“Me and my family hadn’t actually moved into our new house yet, so she sat on the doorstep for two days waiting for me.

“When I put her on the train to send her back home it broke my heart.” Alan has nowmoved into Elaine’s house in Hull, and the couple are due to marry in May.

Elaine, who grew up in Rochester Way, on the Craylands estate, admitted: “He completely wooed me when we were teenagers.

“When we started dating we were completely inseparable.

“When hemoved away, neither of us could drive and the money from our paper rounds couldn’t cover all the travelling expenses.

“Now we are reunited and arranging our wedding, it’s like those years apart didn’t ever happen.”