Our Story
That it took until August of 2020 for Isabel and Patrick to meet is frankly a miracle. In 2011, they each enrolled at the University of Texas, and the decade that followed was a series of near-misses and an increasingly interconnected web of friends and shared experiences. Isabel took high school night classes with one of Patrick’s best friends. Patrick sat at Texas football games in a group with one of Isabel’s best friends. They attended the same parties, went to the same concerts, and even lived in the same neighborhood, riding the same bus into campus every morning. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, they shared Barbarella’s hazy dance floor many times.
So, naturally, it wasn’t until a global pandemic that this narrow gap between Isabel and Patrick’s lives was finally bridged. In spite of all the public places and mutual friends they shared, it took social isolation for them to connect on Hinge. Isabel messaged Patrick first, asking if any pens like the one in his breast pocket in his picture had ever exploded and ruined his shirt – a question Patrick had never considered but found hilarious. They have been challenging each other and making each other laugh ever since.
Their first date was a walk around Hyde Park, the college neighborhood they had each lived in years before. Isabel picked up to-go margaritas from Workhorse Bar, a mutual favorite, and they asked for the first time, “How did it take so long for us to meet?” As the world began to open up, they were able to experience that newness through the lens of their budding relationship (along with many more margaritas). As they were introduced, they fit in with each other’s friends and families as naturally as their own.
They began to take weekend trips to explore the Texas Hill Country together; on the first of these trips, Isabel made biscuits from scratch that Patrick still craves. They swapped favorite books and movies, dreams and goals, and acute observations about strangers they came across in their daily lives. With one laughter-filled day after another, they became each other’s best friends.
In 2022, they recognized they both had dreams of leaving Austin to live somewhere new. That fall, an unforgettable weekend in an A-frame cabin in the Catskills sparked an interest in places with four full seasons, an alien concept to two Texans. Together they began the methodical process of leaving the town that first united them.
In November 2023, they pulled into their new home in Philadelphia, where they have once again been able to experience the joy of newness through the lens of their deepening love. They’ve traded breakfast tacos and brisket for hoagies and cheesesteaks, but otherwise are the same goofy, curious and grateful lovebirds that they’ve always been.
No matter where they live, they are most at peace together on a quiet Saturday morning – drinking coffee, listening to music, Isabel reading a book, Patrick doing a crossword puzzle. It was a November morning just like this when Patrick proposed with a Toi et Moi engagement ring that paired an emerald with a diamond from Isabel’s great-grandmother’s ring.
Although they are each deeply fulfilled by their new lives in Philadelphia, this wedding is all about their Central Texas roots. It harkens back to Isabel’s childhood replete with backyard family happy hours in Canyon Lake. It’s a throwback to those early-relationship weekend getaways Isabel and Patrick took together to the Texas Hill Country, although, sadly, Isabel’s biscuits will not be on the menu.
They cannot wait to make one more weekend of memories with y’all under the Texas sky and celebrate the wonderful – decade-long delayed – miracle of their love.
