“I first learned the concepts of non-violence in my marriage.” — Mahatma Gandhi

“When love is not madness, it is not love.” — Pedro Calderon de la Barca

“We are a work in progress with a lifetime contract.” — Phyllis Koss

“Our songs” are those nostalgic tunes that take you back to a key moment in a relationship. They are the theme songs of couplehood. Maybe it was the song that played at your first dance as a married couple, or maybe it cooed  from a speaker the first time you got frisky. Whenever or wherever it was, hearing that song is guaranteed to take you back in time over and over again.  We were curious to find out what songs lovers today named as their theme songs, and so we asked 586 couples across America what their “our song” was.

The results? Apparently Blake Shelton isn’t just a hot judge on The Voice, but he also knows how to turn up the heat for couples. His song song God Gave Me You, is the #1 song couples cited as their  own “our song.”  At Last by Etta James, Bless the Broken Road by Rascal Flatts, and Don’t Want to Miss a Thing by Aerosmith also all scored highly.

Don’t have a theme song for your relationship yet? No worries. We’ve created a Spotify playlist to inspire you; it’s curated by couples all across America, and includes 380 songs that they told us were their “our songs.” So grab the one you love, turn down the lights, and listen to these tunes.

Working at theicebreak, and any startup really, is incredibly exciting stuff. Many times you might feel like you’re going to work blindfolded, right after being spun around 100 times. But, as chaotic as that might be, it’s also the really, really fun part. You never know what’s going to happen from one day to the next, or what’s going to take off and gain traction and user interest until after you’ve put it out there for your users….or in this case send it to them. Below is the story behind how our newest offering for couples—the Date in a Box monthly subscription service—got started. But first, a bit about the box…

For around $35 a month, we’ll send you and your sweetie a themed “date in a box.” We believe that the best moments of a relationship are born out of shared experiences, and so each box will contain everything you and your honey need to experience a fun and romantic date night together at home. Maybe you have kids and can’t get out much, maybe the tough economy means you don’t have a lot of extra cash to spare on extravagant nights out, or maybe you just want to spend some intimate quality time at home together; our Date in a Box lets you do just that. And the best part is that each box is handcrafted with love, for you and your love.

Now back to the story…

For the holidays, we really wanted to send a personal, handcrafted thank you to some of our heaviest users, our advisors, our investors, remote employees, incubators we’ve been a part of, supporters of technology that focuses on the female consumer, and people who had already written about us (note: no one was expecting to receive anything, and so no one had any idea it was coming when they wrote about us previously). We’re a startup and don’t have a lot of money, and just holiday cards alone can be kinda lame, so we came up with the idea of sending out a “date in a box.” We had tossed around the idea for the product before, but had never really done anything with it besides put it into a Google Doc, and so we thought, well…let’s make one for fun for these folks and send it out—that’s way better than a holiday card.

The theme of the box was Parisian Café, and I spent the entire weekend preceding the holidays stamping, gluing, crafting, and even burning myself with lots of hot wax (which was used to seal the envelopes full of croissant cookies and French coffee). At the end of the weekend, my house was a disaster, but the boxes looked pretty and my “love language” is gift-giving—so I had fun.

Then a funny thing happened over the past couple of weeks—several people started talking about their boxes on social media and tweeting pictures of them, and then we started getting requests—lots of requests like…

“omg too cute! where can I actually buy that?!”

(Photo credits: Alexia Tsosis & Chelsa Skees)

And that’s when it dawned on us—we should start selling these things for real.

So, if you want a fun surprise date with your sweetie, and you’d like to be notified of when the Date in a Box subscription service starts, go to the signup page and put in your email—you’ll hear first when they’re ready to launch!