Atop the Statue of Liberty, she says ‘Yes’

Aaron Weisinger wanted the moment he proposed to his girlfriend to be perfect, memorable and definitely creative.

This took months of planning.

Weisinger, 26, decided that the most perfect, memorable, creative (and meaningful) place to propose to girlfriend, Erica Breder, would be in the Statue of Liberty’s crown. It would be symbolic — his great grandparents had immigrated through Ellis Island, and his girlfriend’s grandparents emigrated from Czechoslovakia.

Simple, right?

That’s what he thought.

When Weisinger went online months ahead of time to make the arrangements, he found that the crown had been closed to the public since 9/11.

Luckily for him, it was set to reopen on July 4, 2009 — the day before the pair would depart from New York on a Birthright Israel trip.

But when he tried to get tickets the first day they went on sale, his ship was sunk. He woke up at 5 a.m., went online, called on his cell phone, kept refreshing his browser, kept hitting redial — but alas, “there was no way I could get tickets,” Weisinger said. “At that point, I went back to bed, disappointed, and figured I’d try the next day. But everything was sold out.”

Aaron Weisinger gets down on one knee to propose to Erica Breder in the Statue of Liberty’s crown. photo/ap/david goldman

“I wrote a letter to [Sen.] Dianne Feinstein and President Obama,” he said. “I figured what the heck. I’ve never asked for anything. Maybe they could help me out. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear from them.”

So he turned to the next-best resource: Google.

A search directed him to the Statue of Liberty Club, a group and Web site run by a New York man — who had proposed to his wife on Liberty Island.

“He had four tickets to the crown at 8 a.m., and he told me he would love to help make our day come true,” Weisinger said.

Once the precious tickets (only 240 were available for the first-day reopening) were secured, Weisinger charged the couple’s friends, Chris and Augustina, with keeping a secret, and snapping photographs as he bent down on one knee.

Last summer in New York, it rained for days preceding July 4. But on that morning, the sky cleared and the view from the top of the Statue of Liberty “was breathtaking,” said Breder, 25.

The 8-foot deck inside the statue’s crown was cramped. The couple was squeezed in with eight other people. Though out of breath after climbing 354 stairs, Weisinger started to talk about how amazing their relationship is, and that’s when he made his move.

“When Aaron got down on one knee I did not realize that he was proposing,” Breder recalled. “He grabbed my hand and held it firmly. I looked down to see his bright blue eyes looking right back at me. He looked nervous but had a big smile. It was at that moment that I realized my life was going to change forever.”

Breder was “shocked, ecstatic and filled with joy.” She was also surprised that Weisinger was able to keep the proposal a secret from her, while still letting his family know, getting her parents’ blessing and buying a ring.

Less than 24 hours later, they boarded a plane to Tel Aviv.

They were so exhausted from the hullabaloo that they fell asleep within an hour of boarding.

When they woke up, “I remember opening my right eye and seeing a group of people holding a newspaper and staring at us,” Breder said.

The newspaper they were holding  was the Sunday New York Times: Weisinger and Breder were featured in a photo and a front-page article about the reopening of the crown. The Associated Press also wrote a story that was picked up by papers across the country — giving the happy couple even more coverage than the ribbon-cutting ceremony and appearances by the U.S. secretary of the interior and the governors of New York and New Jersey.

Breder said their fellow Birthright travelers “could not believe the lengths Aaron went to propose and the publicity as a result of it.”

Weisinger and Breder have a long history. They first met in fifth grade at religious school at Congregation Ohr Emet in Walnut Creek. Because Weisinger lived in Danville and Breder lived in Lafayette, they lost touch for a few years and then reconnected in high school, through Midrasha, an educational program for Jewish high school students in the East Bay.

Weisinger graduated high school one year before Breder, and they lost touch once again. But when Breder transferred to U.C. Santa Barbara, they ran into each other and became good friends.

They both moved back to the Bay Area after college, where they reconnected. “And the rest is history,” Breder said.

A summer 2011 wedding is planned, where Breder hopes “to surprise Aaron with some cleverness of my own.”

Unions on break

Unions, a regular feature about a recently married couple, is taking a short vacation. We are still seeking couples married within the last year that had an interesting meeting, courtship or wedding (or any combination thereof). If you want to share your tale or nominate a couple, please contact Stacey Palevsky at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).