Weekly editor finds surprise wedding proposal in full-page ad; she said 'yes'

What's the most romantic way to propose to a community newspaper editor? Through a full-page newspaper advertisement that is sure to catch her attention, of course. That's what Alex Butler did when he proposed last month to his girlfriend Abigail Whitehouse, editor of The Interior Journal in Stanford, Ky.

Fearing Whitehouse would see the advertisement too soon, he placed the ad in the paper's sister paper, The Advocate-Messenger in Danville, Ky.

Because Whitehouse also had access to PDFs of that paper, some trickery was required. Advocate-Messenger Executive Editor Ben Kleppinger told The International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors, of which Whitehouse is a member, “We worked with the press staff at The Winchester Sun (Winchester, Ky.) to pull off a page swap. Our sports editor, Jeremy Schneider, sent the C8 proposal page as the very last one on Friday night."

ISWNE reports, "As soon as he confirmed with the press that they had the plate with the proposal ad, he deleted the real C8 out of the system and uploaded a fake C8 that was just a full-page house ad. At that point, any nosy editors inside the system would only see a house ad and think nothing more of it. Whitehouse told ISWNE, “Once I had confirmation Saturday that Abigail had seen the ad in the paper, I replaced the fake C8 with the real one again, so that our E-edition would have the correct page.”

Oh, and by the way, Whitehouse accepted the proposal. The happy couple has yet to set a date. More on Whitehouse and her contributions to community newspapers can be found here.