Formal Gala in the East Forties

• By Catherine Coreno

Victoria Brewer & Bill Brazell
Saint Bartholomew’s Church and the Harvard Club of New York City
September 13, 2008

Bill had read about the restaurant One If By Land, Two If By Sea and its reputation as a hot spot for wedding proposals. “I made a mental note of it as a place not to go,” he recalls. “You bring someone there and you could give the wrong impression!” That was years before he met Victoria. After just six months of dating her—they met on match.com after his brother persuaded him to join—it was no longer a question of if but when. Bill was going to propose at Tabla, where they’d had their second date, but it was closed for a wedding. “Once I decided to ask her to marry me I felt this wind at my back; I couldn’t wait to do it,” he explains. “I remembered One If By Land ... and I decided to go for it.” Victoria knew of the restaurant’s notoriety: “We hadn’t been dating long, so when I found out we were going there, I didn’t think, Oh I’m getting engaged tonight. There was just no way.” The instant Victoria said yes, Champagne arrived as if on cue. “When we asked our waiter if this happened all the time, he told us, completely unfazed, that there had been 20 that week.”

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