The Proposal

While Danielle and Eric had many adventures between Iceland and the present, for now we'll concern ourselves with one particular excursion to New York City and a brief but meaningful Q & A.

Background of note: Danielle and Eric enjoy reading, including sometimes reading together. They'd just revisited a childhood favorite of Danielle's, The Westing Game (which they recommend to you all, by the way). Also, on a previous road trip to NYC, Danielle had mentioned a number of locales around Manhattan of which she was particularly fond.

So, Danielle and Eric had decided to make New York City their destination for a New Year's Eve celebration - of the new year, their anniversary, and Danielle's birthday, and their friends J&Q's return to the Big Apple (with babies A&E in tow).

Eric had requested that Danielle reserve New Year's Eve day for an anniversary surprise. And so, after waking bright and early on December 31st, Eric presented Danielle with a mysterious envelope labeled "Personal and Confidential. To: Danielle Tumminio Re: The Hansen Game"

Danielle opened it to find instructions to a Westing Game-esque treasure/scavenger hunt around New York! Each new envelope would contain two clues: one would reveal a word of the next book Eric thought they should read together, and the other would reveal the location they'd visit next.

The first clue was "Go to the Apostle, the Evangelist, the one from Patmos." Danielle knew immediately they were headed to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine!

(On the way, they stopped for Eric's first NYC bagel, of course.)

So, arriving at the cathedral, they explored it in detail, marveling at its beauty and grandeur, finding Danielle's favorite room and trying out the acoustics, then guessing at the nationalities of each of several chapels placed around the outer walls of the cathedral.

They made their way back up to the entrance to investigate the next clue...

Danielle and Eric in the nave at St. John the Divine

The next clue was "Next, find a creature so large, only 6 of them could fit end to end along this entire cathedral." Danielle considered this for a moment before deducing it could only be the blue whale room at the Museum of Natural History!

A short subway ride later and they stood at the entrance to one of the coolest museums around! They plotted a course to take them through the museum, past immense and amazing dinosaur fossils (Eric's inner second grade paleontologist was having a great time), woolly mammoths, dioramas of a plethora of human cultures, before finally arriving at the blue whale room.

Danielle and Eric were thrilled by the sight of this model of such a great creature, suspended from the ceiling, as if swimming through the very air. They took a seat on some benches beneath the great whale to examine the next clue. This one was a piece from a board game they'd played with friends called Betrayal at House on the Hill. The clue said to "write down the location of that game, then add food and drink to the first word, and replace the last word with its color." Danielle considered this momentarily before concluding their next destination was Tavern on the Green!

Danielle and Eric underneath the giant blue whale at the Natural History Museum!

They took a lovely walk along Central Park, admiring the serenity of the park, covered in a dusting of snow which had fallen that morning, making for a wintry landscape, and then abated to allow Danielle and Eric some nice weather for walking. Arriving at Tavern on the Green, they walked right in despite it being the restaurant's last day of operation!

They enjoyed the elaborate decoration, some sumptuous dining, and couldn't help but chuckle at the obnoxious conversation of the couple next to them. The waiters were both attentive and detached, as they wouldn't be coming to this job tomorrow. They apologized that they had no dessert menus to show them, as people had taken them all. And yet, Danielle and Eric suspected it wouldn't be the last that would be heard from Tavern on the Green.

Eric at Tavern on the Green. Aren't the chandeliers great? And doesn't the woman behind Eric and to the left look vaguely like Caroline Kennedy?

During their meal, they perused the next clue - this one was a doozy! It was some sort of encoded message, with numbers taking the place of letters. The key, it said, was Danielle's age when she first met Eric. After tapping into her inner cryptographer, she translated the message...which was another riddle! "Where does today meet yesterday?" it asked. Danielle's first answer (a very sensible one, repeated by several of their friends when posed to them) was, "Midnight!" Digging in again, she recalled that same riddle from a Sesame Street special called "Don't Eat the Pictures!" where Big Bird, Snuffy, Oscar and the rest visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art - and that was the answer to the riddle, "at a museum." Unless, of course, it's a science museum... but regardless, off they went to the Met!

They scaled the impressive steps, entered the huge lobby, caroled at the huge Christmas tree, felt patriotic in the American wing, nodded properly at several elaborate recreations of 17th century European interior decoration, and jousted at the Arms and Armor section before finally finding the Temple of Dendur!

The temple was situated at one end of an expansive room, with a moat running around the central raised portion. Benches were set along the perimeter of that raised portion. One entire wall, floor to ceiling, was windows, illuminating the room with the glow of a winter afternoon, the fresh snowfall lying on the hill outside, except for one industrious snowman.

Danielle and Eric strolled slowly into the ancient remnants of the Egyptian temple, feeling the history of those thousands of years. Then they took a break on a bench opposite the temple to work on the next clue.

" 'Next clue, next clue, liberated cattle' doesn't have the same ring, does it?" was a tricky one, but eventually Danielle translated that to mean "Ollie ollie oxen free," indicating the next location was Ollie's, a classic Chinese & noodle restaurant. Without missing a beat, she asked, "We aren't going to eat again alread, are we?" Eric laughed and said they could put that one off until another time, and just get the clue. It said to go back to the first clue and read between the lines...or down along them. Danielle produced the first clue from her bag and immediately found another clue, hidden in the first letters of each line of the original clue! It said "False goal, instead ask." Danielle asked, "So we're not getting the name of the next book we're reading? And ask what?"

Now, Eric had a few more clues and locations available (which they visited later), but time was growing short for the reservation Danielle had made at The View (the revolving restaurant atop the Marriott Marquis on Times Square) and the time felt right, so he told her she'd unlocked the "super secret final hidd en clue." From his coat, he produced another small envelope, removed from it a map of the world and handed it to Danielle. He also took out a small jewelry box, while she was inspecting the map...which may have been a distraction, or may have been to ask her where they should go on their honeymoon...

Eric told Danielle that he loved her very, very much. He said he wanted to hold her hand when it was slippery out, so t hey could hold each other up, and when it wasn't slippery, just because he loved to hold her hand. Then he got down on one knee, opened the jewelry box, and asked her to marry him!

Danielle and Eric post-engagement at the Met.

Danielle wasted no time in saying yes and they had a very lovely kiss, surrounded by museum goers, timeless stones, and a snowman!

They made their way out of the Met, engaged in a whirlwind of wedding discussion, hopped a bus past Rockefeller Center toward Times Square, navigated their way past numerous police barricades using their trusty letter from the Marriott, even getting a police escort at one point, before having some champagne and dessert at The View.

Then, it was back to J&Q's for more celebration (J&Q were in on it and couldn't wait for Danielle and Eric to return), and even baby A woke up just before midnight to ring in the New Year with them.

And that was just the beginning...

Introducing Danielle and Eric

Hey everyone! We're Danielle and Eric and we're getting married in the fall of 2010! We set up this blog so our friends and family could follow the preparations for our wedding. We hope you enjoy our adventures into the world of dress shopping, venue searching, registry making, and, most importantly, cake tasting as much as we are!

But first, here's a bit of intro about ourselves: Danielle hails from Long Island and Eric from outside of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. They met eight years ago in, of all places, St. Andrews, Scotland, where they were both studying abroad. There they were brought together by their mutual friend Monica, another American student. Together, Danielle, Monica, Eric, and their friend Emilia formed the GAWK--the Great American Wok Club. To make up for the fact that the university dining halls closed on the weekends, the members of the Great American Wok Club met every Sunday night in one of the dormitories at St. Andrews. With four bowls, four sets chopsticks, and two woks, they made everything from stir-fries to Indian curries and pancakes. And thus formed their friendship.



Eric, Danielle, and Monica in St. Andrews. Note how the date on the left side of the folder is 16 years too early! The month and day are probably correct.


Eric, Emilia, and Monica at a meeting of the GWOK. We were eating Indian food that night in Danielle's room. You can see her leg in the bottom of the screen as she took the picture from her little sailor bed!

Monica, Danielle, and Eric at the St. Andrew international student ball. The gals shared red lipstick that night (if D remembers rightly!)

But not their romance. Though they laugh about it now, neither Danielle nor Eric paid much attention to the other at the time. Danielle thought, "Nice guy, but he's awfully quiet," and Eric thought, "Seems like a nice girl, but she's very loud." And perhaps their relative loudness and quietness would have found other partners, had not Monica brought them together a second time (dum dum dum).....

Seven years later, Monica and her fiance Rob invited Danielle and Eric to their wedding. Due to a series of poorly thrown weddings (and the fact that she never really enjoyed weddings to begin with), Danielle had developed an elaborate set of Wedding Rules which she invoked whenever anyone in her life announced their nuptials:

Danielle's Wedding Rules

1. I will not travel more than 100 miles for a wedding
2. I will not buy a new dress for a wedding
3. I will spend no more than 100 dollars a night on a hotel room for a wedding
4. I will retain the right to request seating at a different table if any of the following criteria come to pass:
A. I am the only female at a table filled with obnoxiously happy couples and one single, awkward man
B. A majority of people I know are seated at another table
5. I will only attend a wedding if invited with a date, excepting those instances in which five or more of my friends are also invited (what's worse than being 'that person' standing at the bar with no one to talk to?)
6. I will not attend pre-wedding dinners or post-wedding breakfast, as everyone looks better at the wedding reception, says everything worth saying at the wedding reception, and isn't hung over at the wedding reception
7. All wedding rules are rendered null and void when I am a member of the wedding party, excepting the rule #5.

And so, when Monica's wedding arrived, Danielle, being single at the time, called to announce that unless she found her a date, wedding rule #5 would kick in and she would have no soloist for her ceremony. "But of course!" Monica said without hesitation. "You can go with Eric. He's coming by himself too!"

So Danielle and Eric's paths crossed again, this time not on the wintry plains of Scotland but at a bonfire in Maryland. Both were surprised to find that the other had grown respectively quieter and louder, and, perhaps more importantly, had a passion for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As the evening was drawing to a close, Danielle said, "You know, I'd really like to go to Iceland for New Years," and Eric said, "Hey, I'll come with you." Danielle thought that would be nice, so she agreed. And therein began an adventurous romance that would take them from St. Andrews to Maryland, Rejkyavik, Boston, Milwaukee, New York, Chicago, Cedar Rapids, New Haven, and beyond.

And that was just in the first year....

Danielle and Eric living it up in a game of Potato Butt at Monica's wedding.