Our Story
The Beginning
We met in December 2019, when Dana tagged along to a bar with her future maid of honor, Kelly, after a work paint-and-sip event in SoHo. Kelly told Dana she’d just befriended this cool guy from Long Island with a unique name and green hair who worked at the SoHo Diner, and with whom she thought Dana would get along. So, when Kelly invited Dana to come when she met up with the Mystery Man at Astor Place, Dana’s curiosity overrode her annoyance with the intensifying snow.
Dana’s first thoughts about Bram were about how cute he was, with his trendy, downtown skater boi vibe and green hair. He was funny, too, with a warm, full-faced smile that Bram commented on the tropical sunset masterpiece she created at the paint-and-sip event, saying there was “a lot of emotion” in her brush strokes. That was striking—rarely did anyone make comments on Dana’s artwork that extended past, “that’s so cool,” or “pretty!” or “Why is there so much blood in your painting, Dana?”
That first meeting was brief, but made a mark. Though we’d never admit it, we still thought about each other in passing.
There was another chance encounter before the pandemic hit, forcing our budding friendship into a de facto pause as the world appeared to end around us. We both individually adapted to The New Normal and found ways to survive until a light at the end of that hellish tunnel appeared in mid-2021.
The Beginning, But For Real This Time
We next encountered each other in that summer of 2021: eager to take advantage of the city’s gradual reopening, Bram invited some friends to come to a Brooklyn nightclub where a friend’s band was playing. As a musician, unrepentant extrovert, and regular participant in Warped Tour mosh pits, Bram was eager for any opportunity to experience night life again. He extended his extra ticket to Dana on a whim, unsure if the mysterious woman their mutual friends recently began referring to as “The Mermaid” would even want to go.
But Dana said yes, and that night in Bushwick was life-changing, marking a shift from the Before Times to a new future. We and our mutual friends solidified our little clique as we scream-cheered for Bram’s friend’s band before heading to the club floor to dance the night away. We became Going Out Friends, regularly donning our trendiest outfits and covering ourselves in glitter to make up for lost time in the city’s nightclubs and music venues.
As the weekend nights we spent together got colder, we bonded. We dressed up, later discovering that we each only had the self-confidence to go all-out because of how unfazed and inspired we thought the other was. We talked about the mosh pits we’d been in and the music our other friends asked us to not play. We discovered we’d both had an emo phase in our teen years that never completely went away.
These shared interests eventually led us to both buy tickets for the When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas the next year. The lineup’s concentration of yesteryear’s hardcore and emo bands, all of which featured heavily in our formative years, was intoxicating. And all of this was happening in Vegas? The city where a much shorter version of Dana spent many Thanksgivings and birthdays with her parents? The place known for its unabashed, deliciously gaudy pageantry? Even though Bram had never left the East Coast before—nor had he ever been on an airplane–it all was too tantalizing to pass up.
What Happens in Vegas Doesn’t Always Stay in Vegas
These shared interests eventually led us to both buy tickets for the When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas the next year. The lineup of the hardcore and emo bands that featured heavily in our formative years was intoxicating. And all of it was happening in Vegas? The place known for its unabashed, deliciously gaudy pageantry? Even though Bram had never left the East Coast before—nor had he ever been on an airplane–it all was too tantalizing to pass up.
That trip to Vegas was everything and changed everything. We went to the festival, gladly enduring fourteen hours of crowds and desert sun so we could scream along to Misery Business and Welcome to the Black Parade at the end of the night. And as we limped down the Strip the next day, it became clear just how similar we are. It was inescapable, from things as small as our pee breaks consistently aligning, to those big, Life Values principles like whether we wanted to raise kids in New York City. We both marveled at the pageantry of the Luxor’s pyramid and the fake Eiffel Tower with awe and curiosity. And we talked and talked and talked, and it was easy. Being around each other felt natural—like that’s what we were supposed to be doing this whole time.
We returned to New York City separately, but things had changed. Our friendship was fortified, transcending the previous Party Friends classification and moving into that was still a little nebulous but undoubtedly more meaningful. We cautiously began hanging out more often, and spent hours texting and calling each other when we were apart.
How a Haunted Basement Changed Everything
Dana realized she was falling for Bram when, a few months later, she called him in a panic after blowing a fuse in her apartment, resulting in a power outage. Despite knowing this apartment might actually be haunted, Bram quickly trekked to Manhattan from Queens to help. He braved the haunted basement to flip the power back on, and mostly pretended to not be scared.
It wasn’t long before we decided there was something between us we couldn’t ignore, and we decided to give it a go. We started 2023 as An Item, and slowly began spending more and more time together. Weekly sleepovers turned into biweekly sleepovers, and eventually Bram was spending more time at Dana’s apartment than at his own.
It made sense to move in together that Fall. Coexisting was easy and fun. At home, we cooked delicious meals together, built furniture in the backyard, shot Nerf guns at each other. Basking in the other’s presence, tasks like mopping and putting the dishes away suddenly seemed quick and easy. The weekends were just as fun, too: we’d pick out the most ridiculous, color-coordinated outfits to go out in, and danced together as if we were the only people in the club.
For the first time, Dana—the very person who regularly crept out of teenaged sleepovers at 3 AM to drive home because of how impossible it seemed to relax in other people’s presence—could actually sleep easily with someone else next to her in bed. And Bram, who’d only enjoyed cats and dogs from a distance, became World’s Best Pet Dad, volunteering to bathe our squirmy hairless cat and take our chihuahua on walks on his days off.
An Almost-Proposal in McDonald’s Mobile Pick-Up Lane #2
When neither of us could imagine living without the other in our lives, we knew this was For Real. We started talking about the big, scary “M” word, and whether we wanted to do that with the other at some point. It was scary to talk about life-long commitment— neither of us had ever seriously thought we’d get M-worded to anyone before, and yet here we were, happily domesticated, unable to live without the other.
Dana knew there was a possibility of something big happening when we took a last-minute trip to the Catskills for Valentine’s Day 2024. That was Bram’s plan, too. This was Bram’s moment to pop the big M-Word question. And, even though he knew Dana would say yes, he still made sure to ask the dog and two cats permission before asking Dana to M-Word him—fortunately, they all seemed on-board.
Bram did his research, trying to find the perfect place in Sullivan County to pop the question. Maybe a bridge in a park somewhere? But what about the cold? Would the river under the bridge even be flowing when it’s 9° outside? And he didn’t want to do it on Valentine’s Day—how trite would that be?!—so he planned for the next day. He was excited and nervous.
We spent the last morning as boyfriend and girlfriend slowly driving around a former cult’s compound, Dana hanging out the window with her telephoto camera snapping pictures, while Bram nervously fiddled with the ring box in his pocket. As life did what life does, time slipped away and the sun began to disappear as we waited for our order in a McDonald’s parking lot.
Bram looked at Dana with pursed lips and an intense gaze that Dana could immediately intuit. She thought about it, and Dana ultimately decided that she’d be fine with getting engaged at McDonald’s. Dana was known for loving a lil treat from McDonald’s, and it’d be a fun story to tell future generations. But, she wasn’t sure if Bram would be okay with that—she knew how important it was to him for the proposal to be perfect—so Dana said, “Don’t propose to me at McDonald’s.” We snapped out of the moment, laughing, eventually heading back to the AirBnB. Bram, however, was worried that the moment for his perfect proposal had slipped away.
But we didn’t need the sun or a bridge or river for the proposal to be perfect. As we pulled into the AirBnB, it began to gently snow. We started the fire place, then went to gather more firewood from the barn, laughing at nothing as we crunched through the snow. And when we got back inside the cabin, with the snow outside picking up and the fire inside crackling to life, Bram got on one knee and asked the big question.
Immediately, Dana started ugly-crying, grabbing Bram’s hands to stabilize herself as she fell to her knees and repeatedly cried, “Oh my goooooooood,” through mucousy snorts. She thought if Bram still wanted to marry her after seeing her messy reaction to being proposed to, then he must be the one.