Madeline Claire Whittle and Charles Norton Bramesco first hit it off over a horror movie — not as theatergoers, but as judges serving on a panel at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival in October 2019.

Ms. Whittle, an assistant programmer for Film at Lincoln Center, and Mr. Bramesco, a freelance film and television critic, had followed each other on social media for a while and met briefly at film events, but hadn’t talked much until then. In discussions about the festival’s films, “Charles and I tended to align in our opinions,” Ms. Whittle, 33, said. They both liked “Swallow,” a film about a woman who develops a compulsion to eat inedible objects.

By the festival’s end, “Swallow” had multiple awards, and Ms. Whittle had a crush.

Weeks later, Ms. Whittle, who goes by Maddie, sent Mr. Bramesco, 30, a message asking if he’d want to go out sometime. He suggested a few days later. On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, they met for their first date at a cocktail bar in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Mr. Bramesco wore his lucky green shirt, and they talked about family and film over jazz and Lambrusco wine.

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“I was surprised by how quickly we got into really substantive things,” Mr. Bramesco said. Ms. Whittle had read his work — he has written for The Guardian, New York Magazine and The New York Times, among other publications — and wanted to hear about his experience as a writer. He knew the festivals she worked on and had attended retrospectives she organized.

They continued to date, showing each other their favorite films and falling more in love with each other in the process. Mr. Bramesco first knew he loved Ms. Whittle when she showed him “Danny Deckchair,” a comedy inspired by a true story, in which a man ties a bunch of balloons to a deck chair and floats across Australia. Mr. Bramesco thought, “I want to be with this woman forever.”

Then, about three months into their relationship came the start of the pandemic. Ms. Whittle moved into Mr. Bramesco’s apartment, which he shared with a roommate, for a two-week period that turned into a year. During lockdown, they watched horror franchises that Ms. Whittle had not yet seen, like “Saw,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Final Destination.”

“There were so many big question marks about how this was all going to play out,” Ms. Whittle said, reflecting on the tumult of the time. “But even that early on in our relationship, I felt this inner steadying force of knowing that as long as the two of us could be physically together through it, and keep each other company, and sort of ride it out, that it would be OK.”

In April 2021, they moved into their own apartment in Brooklyn. The next spring, they went on their first overseas trip together to Paris, where Ms. Whittle had studied abroad in college. She graduated from Yale with a bachelor’s degree in film studies; Mr. Bramesco has a bachelor’s degree in film studies and English from Tulane University.

She showed him her favorite spots around Paris, and they spent days walking around, getting lost, people-watching and drinking wine. They went to Le Champo, an art house theater, to see “An American in Paris.”

“That was the most radiantly happy I’d ever been in my whole life,” Mr. Bramesco said.

In October 2022, Mr. Bramesco took Ms. Whittle to dinner at Mominette, a French restaurant in Bushwick. After dinner, they returned to the bar where they’d had their first date. When they got home, he took her up to the roof of their apartment building. Through tears, overlooking the city skyline, he proposed. “I was grinning from ear to ear,” Ms. Whittle said.

They were married April 20 at the Dumbo Loft, an events space in Brooklyn, by Eva Bramesco, Mr. Bramesco’s sister, who received a one-day New York State officiant license.

The reception menu included cocktails with movie references — a mojito that nodded to a line from Michael Mann’s “Miami Vice” and a Kentucky Mule for Clint Eastwood’s “The Mule” — but they were wary of too many film references. “We didn’t want it to be cornball,” Mr. Bramesco said. “I don’t think we’re corny about film,” Ms. Whittle said. But, she added: “We’re corny about each other.”

In front of 94 guests, they danced their first dance to “This Will Be Our Year” by the Zombies. Nearly four years ago, Mr. Bramesco played it on the piano for Ms. Whittle on their first visit to his childhood home in Danvers, Mass.

“I was dazzled,” Ms. Whittle said, thinking back to the impromptu performance. “I was swept off my feet.”