Two sets of identical twins wed
No, you’re not seeing double! In this fairytale wedding identical twins Brittany and Briana married identical twins Josh and Jeremy
IF WEDDING guests hadn’t known what was going on they might have been worried something was wrong with their eyesight. Standing before them at the altar were two identical blonde brides. And as if that wasn’t strange enough, their grooms were also the spitting image of each other.
When identical twin sisters Brittany and Briana Deane (32) married identical twin brothers Jeremy and Josh Salyers (34) recently it really was a case of seeing double. From the brides’ matching gowns and veils to the grooms’ tuxedos, everything was in duplicate – even the ministers officiating at the ceremony in Ohio in the United States were twins.
The sisters have been inseparable since birth and although they hoped they’d walk down the aisle together one day they didn’t think it would actually happen. So when Cupid brought them together with identical twin brothers they were determined their joint wedding would be an occasion everybody would remember.
There was hardly a dry eye in the house as the brothers and sisters tied the knot side by side in a ceremony themed Twice upon a Time. Fittingly the nuptials took place in the town of Twinsburg during the Twins Days Festival, which was where the couples met.
“It’s really been a fairytale come true,” Brittany, who married Jeremy, told American magazine People. “I get to marry the man of my dreams and at the same time I get to look over next to me and see my twin sister marrying the man of her dreams.”
AYEAR earlier Briana was sitting in the stands watching the festivities at the Twins Days Festival – billed as “the largest annual gathering of twins (and other multiples) in the world” – when she felt her sister grab her wrist.
She instantly recognised their secret signal. “It’s what we always do when we get excited about something,” she says.
Scanning the hall, she spotted what had caught her sister’s eye. “I saw these two amazingly handsome young men who looked to be about our age,” Brittany recalls.
“They were stunning,” Briana chips in.
For the next two days of the festival they were too shy to do anything – apart from frequently grabbing each other’s wrists and gasping in awe. But on the last evening at a party the two sets of twins finally got chatting.
A few days later the brothers sent the sisters a Facebook message telling them they could hardly wait for the 2018 festival.
Brittany and Briana, who hail from Virginia, had a snappy response ready. “Why wait?” they asked.
Josh and Jeremy, who lived 600km away in Tennessee, didn’t need to be asked twice.
They immediately asked the sisters out. Their first date was at the Twin
Lakes State Park near the sisters’ home.
Seven months later, on 2 February – the second day of the second month – the Salyers brothers asked the Deane sisters for their hands in marriage. And they chose the spot of their first date to pop the question – Twin Lakes.
The brothers had planned the engagement down to the smallest detail.
They’d asked Brittany and Briana to wear identical blue dresses under the pretext that a film crew was shooting an ad featuring twins in the park’s on-site wedding venue.
When the director called action on the “shoot”, the two brothers, dressed in identical black suits, went down on bended knee.
“Of course it was an easy question,” Brittany recalls, laughing. “They got us pretty good.”
The crew were actually filming a TV series called Twins Marry Twins and the episode with the identical Deane-Salyers’ engagement and wedding will be broadcast next year on American channel TLC (DStv channel 135).
Many brides find wedding planning super-stressful but for the sisters it was a breeze because they’re so in-synch, sharing almost identical tastes.
“We had the same vision of what our double wedding day would look like,” Briana says.
“We work well together and I’d say the hardest part was planning everything across state lines because none of us lives in Twinsburg, Ohio.”
Despite the logistical issues they were determined to have their wedding at the magical place where they’d met their perfect matches.
The sisters had attended the festival since 2011, hoping they’d find their Mr Rights, but last year was the first time Jeremy and Josh were there.
THE brothers feel blessed. “We very much lucked out on our first attempt,” Jeremy says. “We found our twins there. It’s been a dream since then.” When they met Brittany and Briana there was an instant connection,” he says. “You know when you know.
“We’ve always known our whole life if we were going to be married it was going to be with twins.”
Both sets of twins had experienced the challenges of dating who they refer to as “singletons” – or non-twins.
“It’s hard when you’re dating someone and they don’t understand the twin bond,” Brittany says. But all that’s in the past. The couples, who now share a house in Maryland, hope to have kids and raise them together as one big, happy family.
“When we have children my and Josh’s children will be genetic siblings to Briana and Jeremy’s children,” Brittany says.
“Even though they’re cousins, they’re technically genetic siblings. We imagine it will be like two moms and two dads all raising our families together.”
Laura Almasy, a genetics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, confirms that in theory this is correct.
“We’d expect their children to be genetically as similar as full siblings are to each other,” she says.
Siblings born to the same set of parents share about half their genes with one another, she adds.
“So the expectation would be that [the couples’ children] will share half their DNA like full siblings would.”
But just like typical siblings any particular pair of individuals could share more or fewer of those genes, Almasy says.
Statistically the chances of one of the couples having identical twins are about a million to one. But if it happens it would just be the cherry on the cake. The way they see it, they’ve already won the jackpot.
“We’ve always felt blessed to have each other and now we have two other twins who are just like us,” Josh says. “But they also add their own contributions that we couldn’t have. Together we can accomplish anything.”
‘It’s hard when you’re dating someone and they don’t understand the twin bond’