Isabel Copley, 24, a graduate medical student, and Owen Mitchell, 24, who works in PR, were married on September 4, 2021, at Spicer Street Church in St Albans, Hertfordshire
Owen had wanted to make a proposal with a difference and inquired if it could take place on the rooftop of the church where he and Isabel worship. The minister agreed and suggested that if Isabel said “yes”, then Owen should ring the bell on his way down.
He chose an engagement ring online during lockdown and devised a plan for someone at church to ask Isabel for help getting something down from the roof space at St Nicholas Cole Abbey. The building was burnt down in the Great Fire of London and rebuilt by the office of Sir Christopher Wren.
Isabel wondered what was happening as she crawled through the rafters, out of a window and on to the roof where Owen was waiting with a bottle of champagne. “Owen was so nervous,” she says. “I could see it written all over his face. He panicked and said, ‘What are you doing here?’ ”
Isabel and Owen met as 11-year-olds at a Christian summer camp in Wiltshire. He recalls her being tall and sporty. “She was very funny,” he says. She recalls him being shy. They became friends and by the age of 13 he had developed a crush. “Izzy never replied to a lot of my texts,” he says.
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He lived in Bath and she was based in St Albans. They met at camp for a week every summer until they were 18, and would keep in contact throughout the year. She really noticed Owen when he turned up looking taller and cooler, with a new haircut, at the age of 15.
Three years later Isabel took the lead. She phoned Owen to suggest that they think seriously about their relationship and invited him to stay with her family that weekend. “It was a bit intense,” he says.
After separate gap years, Isabel went to read psychology at Durham University and Owen to study politics at Cardiff University. “We assumed we’d stay together,” she says. They spoke daily and saw each other every month. “It was tough,” she says. They broke up briefly, but within a week, Isabel changed her mind. “He is just the most reliable, trustworthy and loyal person I’ve ever met,” she says.
Owen describes Isabel as beautiful, intelligent, kind and loving. He appreciates her support and patience. On graduating, he got a job in London, where he works in PR, and lived with a friend in Kennington, south London. He is a cricket fan and has membership at the Oval. She plays lacrosse and netball.
Isabel went back to her family home and worked as a healthcare assistant in a psychiatric prison. She and Owen would meet up twice a week to worship at St Nicholas Cole Abbey. Last year she started a four-year graduate medical degree at the University of Buckingham with the plan of becoming a psychiatrist.
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They gave themselves a year to get married and decided to go ahead even if Covid meant cutting their guest list. In the end they were lucky and had 130 guests. They wanted the reception to be held on the semi-derelict site of a former brickworks, which her parents owned, just beyond their back garden. “You couldn’t walk on it barefoot,” she says. “It was the biggest clear-up job of all time.”
Isabel is the first of her three siblings to get married and it was a family effort to transform the site. Her mother filled it with beds of cosmos, and converted old storage units into a gin bar and a catering unit.
The 1.30pm ceremony took place at Spicer Street Church, an evangelical church in St Albans where Isabel has been going since she was a child. She walked in with her father as a string quartet played. She and Owen were married by the minister from St Nicholas Cole Abbey.
Friends gave Bible readings and Owen’s maternal grandparents led prayers. Afterwards the congregation celebrated with cake at the back of the church. The newlyweds turned up to the reception in an open-top Beauford Tourer with the horn honking. Tables were set out in a marquee and named after places they had been together. The top table was Greece, where they went on honeymoon.
Isabel and Owen have since moved into a flat in King’s Cross from where she can commute to her placement at Milton Keynes University Hospital. He has discovered that he is more of an extrovert, whereas she enjoys an evening at home.
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“I would have assumed I would have a whirlwind romance and meet somebody as an adult and fall madly in love,” Isabel says. “It is so lovely to have known Owen my whole life and have been friends for so long.
“People always called us childhood sweethearts and that used to make me cringe. Now it is so nice. Owen is my life partner.”