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Romance is all in the family Photo by Jim Craven Jenny Spires and Daniel Newman are the third set of Spires-Newman siblings to get married. They tied the knot Saturday. The first Spires-Newman pairing blazed a trail for the other siblings -- to the alter BY BILL KETTLER No one should have been surprised when Jenny Spires and Dannal Newman decided to get married. Six years ago Jenny's brother Mark married Dannal's sister, Kari. And just last March, Jenny's brother Greg tied the knot with Dannal's sister, Airen. So when Jenny and Dannal exchanged vows Saturday at Medford's First Baptist Church, there were enough brothers and sisters and brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law in the wedding party to make a genealogist's head spin. The bride said she had some reservations at first about dating her brother's wife's brother, "but we had so much fun I couldn't not go out with him again." Dannal, the groom, recognized their unusual situation, too, "but when Jenny and I were together, we never thought about it. Our reasons for being together had nothing to do with anybody else." Mark Spires and Kari Newman started the marryin' cycle when they fell in love during college. Their brothers and sisters met during the wedding and saw each other at occasional family gatherings, but there were too many years between siblings for romance to spark. Airen Newman was barely a teenager when she met her future husband, Greg Spires, during Mark and Kari's wedding. "I was the maid of honor, and he was the best man," said Aerin. "I was 13 and he was 19. I thought he was cute, but he didn't notice me at all." Jenny Spires was just 14 when she met the man who would become her husband. "I thought she was cute," said Dannal, who was 18 then, "but she was only 14." After a few years passed, the boys and girls saw each other differently. Greg and Airen started dating, and within three months they were engaged. "We were the express version." quipped Greg. Mother Dee Newman saw the chemistry when her daughter Airen started dating Greg. "Within two weeks we knew they were going to get married." "It surprised us when the second set got together," said mother Marilyn Spires. "We thought they would date each other and move on, but they thought differently." About the same time Greg and Airen started dating, Jenny and Dannal felt an attraction, too. "At first all we could do was laugh," said Kari Spires, "but when we saw how well they got along, we figured it would probably work out." "The interesting thing is that the couples are so different," said her husband, Mark. "It's not like a cookie-cutter thing where the relationships are all the same. Everybody just matches up." "We all have different personalities," said Airen, Mark's sister-in-law, "but the couples totally match." Marilyn Spires, the mother of the bride, said the two families' similar values and priorities drew them together. "It's not so surprising with that in mind that they would be interested in each other," she said. "I couldn't have picked better mates for my children," said Dee Newman, the mother of the groom. She said the triple union has pulled the two families especially close, and the couples' children will be "double cousins." "Genetically, the cousins will be like brothers and sisters," she said, because they will be descended from just two families. Greg Spires said the three marriages will make some of life's ordinary problems just a little easier to resolve. "It does make the holidays a lot simpler," he said. "We don't have to decide whose house were going to visit." Dannal said the family connections might help solve a big crisis, too. "If it ever comes to a kidney transplant," he joked, "we won't have far to look." Mail Tribune Copyright � interRogue & The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA