A Marriage Of Fate

You might say fate matched Jenna Carnes and Spencer Davenport not once, but twice.

They met once through mutual acquaintances – her cousin is his best friend – and another through the Tinder dating app. It’s debatable as to who was more surprised they became a couple: themselves or their acquaintances.

“We knew of each other because of my cousin but I just never took any interest in Spencer,” said now Jenna Davenport. “And he just thought I was that goofy cousin of his friend.”

Regardless, the second time, when Tinder’s online dating algorithm aligned them as singles, they both listened.
Five years, a Christmas Eve proposal and a pandemic later, the couple tied the knot in an October ceremony that was every bit as special as they hoped, even if it was delayed four months due to COVID-19 restrictions.

“It was a CRAZY year,” said Jenna, 31, a 2008 Glenwood graduate and a healthcare receptionist in Omaha. Spencer, 32, is a Plattsmouth native and a grocer manager with Bakers.

The once and future Davenports took a circuitous route from acquaintances to friends to to husband and wife. They had known each other for several years but never felt a romantic spark until 2015.

“We’d run into each other and we were friendly,” Spencer said. “But then like a lot of single people we were both on Tinder trying to find a match and we saw each other on there.”

“We both swiped right,” Jenna quipped.

Both were surprised to see the other on the app. It served as the perfect ice-breaker. After communicating through the app, they eventually worked up to exchanging phone numbers, texting and finally a date.

The day after that first date Jenna left for a weeklong vacation in New York. Spencer wasn’t sure where he stood. “I figured if I don’t hear back from her, then that’s that,” he said. But he did hear back from her. “She got back and she got a hold of me and that was that.”

Early on in their dating, Jenna and Spencer kept their relationship under wraps.  Until, that is, a friend spotted them leaving a movie holding hands.

By the end of the night, the news was out: their entire circle of friends knew they were dating. And they could all not be more excited for the couple.

“Her cousin, who is one my best friends, called right away and said, ‘You dog!” said Spencer, laughing.
He proposed on Christmas Eve, 2018.

“My dad proposed to my mom on Christmas Eve,” he said. “It’s not really a tradition but it felt meaningful.”
Jenna, of course, said yes.

They soon went to work planning a June 2020 wedding. The church and reception hall were rented. The photographer and DJ hired. The dress picked out. The invitations sent. They’d even tasted a sampling of the food by the caterer.

And then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Shutdowns and lockdown orders and social distancing infected everything from schools to concerts to restaurants and bars and yes, weddings. As essential workers, it was a scary time for them both. By March the couple had to face reality: their dream June wedding was not going to happen.

“It was a bummer for sure,” Jenna said.

“We had to re-do everything,” Spencer said. “We had RSVPs from about everybody that they were coming. It was going to be over 300 people. But when they started shutting everything down we had to re-do all the invites.”

It wasn’t easy to relent and come off the June 13 date.

“You would have thought I lost a family member I was so upset,” Jenna said. “I had things already engraved with that date.”

“She was very attached to the date,” Spencer agreed. “I was like, ‘It’s just another date. Now it’s a new date.’ And we were good with that.”

The original June 13 date was pushed back to Oct. 3.

The couple did go out for a bit to celebrate their would-be wedding date on June 13. They had the top tier of their wedding cake made and celebrated by eating it together in their apartment.

At the time, they both thought the four -month delay would be plenty. Turns out they got in their postponed ceremony and socially-distanced reception at the Livestock Exchange Building in Omaha just days before the state of Nebraska re-imposed a limit on large gatherings.

The couple sweated out those tenuous days leading up to the ceremony.

“We were so sure, like everybody, that this would be over by the end of the summer,” Spencer said. “We were all wrong.”

But they did get their ceremony in without a hitch, complete with 200 “socially distanced” guests, Mr. and Mrs. masks and a Facebook Live stream for those who could not attend.

“There were 459 people on there,” Jenna said. “School teachers I have not seen since kindergarten. Random people that made me think, ‘Oh man, maybe I should have blocked this.’ But it was kind of nice that people commented on it and our photographers captured our families and guests in masks.”

The couple is torn about the historical context of the year that was 2020, that they basically had to plan two weddings while fending off a global pandemic to get married. But they did get married. Some might call that fate.

“I have never been so scared and yet so excited,” Jenna said of her emotional roller coaster of a year. “A wedding during a pandemic. We’ll never be able to explain this feeling to anyone else. And we basically had a virtual wedding. I never thought in my life that we would ever see any of that happen.”