Dan and Gabrielle actually briefly met at Slate Nightclub in NYC in August 2015. Romantic, right?! Dan had just started medical school at Touro in Harlem, while Gabrielle was finishing her last year of interior design school at FIT in Chelsea. It wasn't until later that December when Gabrielle's roommate invited a bunch of friends to their Midtown apartment to celebrate SantaCon where the two really hit it off. For those of you who don't know what SantaCon is, it is an annual pub crawl throughout all of NYC in which people dress in Santa Claus costumes or various Christmas characters to spread joy and ..party hard. Dan graciously let Gabrielle borrow his Santa beard that day, and the rest is history.

Dan and Gabrielle love to travel. Their first trip was to Chicago in June 2016. Throughout the years to follow, they enjoyed a romantic winter getaway in Vermont, saw Gabrielle's idol Celine Dion perform in Las Vegas, explored Toronto with the Delaney family, and visited Gabrielle's sister Sam in sunny Miami. But the best was yet to come with their biggest destination yet: Amsterdam! This trip had been planned for months as a fun "last hurrah" vacation before Dan started his Long Island residency at NUMC. Little did Gabrielle know, he had already packed the engagement ring in his suitcase, along with a "selfie stick/phone tripod" that Gabrielle thought was just a nerdy tourist device bought by her nerdy boyfriend. As Gabrielle loved her spreadsheets and planning, they had mapped out the entire trip, including a picnic lunch in Vondel Park. But what she had not planned was when Dan started setting up his phone tripod to "take selfies of us with the pretty park scenery". Dan had created the perfect most romantic picnic setting, while Gabrielle, still clueless, was reading her tourism book to scope out their next destination. When he pulled the ring box out of his adorable cardigan and popped the question, Gabrielle had the biggest look of shock on her face! She said YES under the willow trees in The Netherlands, with that very special moment captured on Dan's "sneaky" tripod :)