Editor’s note: This is part two of a four part series of celebrations that was printed in the January/February 2025 issue of Bethesda Magazine.
The couple: Tiffany Chau, 34, works as a training and communications specialist at a life sciences company, and is also the founder of a wellness consulting firm. She grew up in Silver Spring. Spencer Nabeta, 43, is an information technology professional and a boxing instructor. He grew up in Silver Spring. They live in Rockville with Serene, their toddler daughter.
How they met: The pair met at Title Boxing Club in Kensington, where Spencer is an instructor. Tiffany started attending his Sunday morning classes regularly in the summer of 2020. “I felt like I had a really good workout when I went to his classes,” Tiffany remembers. They followed each other on Instagram, and Spencer invited her to come weightlifting with him. She took him up on it, and afterward they had dinner together at Silver Diner in Rockville, where they bonded over their shared experience of being the children of immigrants—his parents are from Uganda, and hers are Chinese-Vietnamese. “I remember [it] being refreshing to share that,” Spencer says.
The proposal: Spencer proposed to Tiffany on their “babymoon” at the Hummingbird Inn in Goshen, Virginia, ahead of the birth of their daughter in 2022. Out at dinner one night, he told the restaurant’s staff about his plan to pop the question. “After dinner, they brought out what she thought was dessert, but it was a ring. And the waiter was recording it. I got down on one knee—and she blacked out,” Spencer jokes. For Tiffany, the proposal came at just the right time. “During that dinner, I had intended to talk to him about engagement as next steps, but I didn’t know when to bring it up,” she says. “He knew what was in my heart and mind before I needed to say it.”
The celebrations: “It was decided very early on that we needed two separate days to do this,” Tiffany says, because the couple wanted to include traditions from both of their cultures in the festivities. So on Dec. 1, 2023, in front of about 180 guests, they said “I do” at the Winslow in Baltimore, an industrial-style venue festooned with blue-toned tablescapes, string lights hanging from the vaulted ceiling, and plenty of lush foliage that achieved the bride’s “indoor greenhouse courtyard” vision. “The unveiling was astounding. We were speechless,” the groom says of the decor. After a ceremony officiated by one of Spencer’s friends, guests boogied their way into the reception area by table number. “Everybody got a chance to kind of shine,” Tiffany says. During the reception, traditional Ugandan dancers performed for the guests, and Spencer’s sisters and cousins surprised the couple with a dance to the theme from Mission: Impossible. For their first dance, the newlyweds slowed things down, swaying to “Cruisin’ ” by Smokey Robinson. Their daughter, meanwhile, “hung out until she wasn’t hanging out anymore, and fell asleep on the couch in our break room at the venue,” Tiffany says.
The next day, the newlyweds welcomed about 140 guests to the China Garden Han Gong restaurant in Rockville for a multicourse Chinese banquet with a jazz quartet. A pair of lion dancers, accompanied by the sounds of a drum and cymbals, started off the feast with a bang. “They essentially ward off evil and help bring luck to whatever space they’re dancing in,” Tiffany says. “We walked in, and they came in behind us, kind of like our bodyguards.”
The food: At the Winslow,guests dined on hors d’oeuvres such as lentil cauliflower fritters and duck spring rolls before diving into a surf and turf entree of bistro filet and Atlantic salmon, or the vegetarian option, Indian spiced eggplant. The meal at China Garden was also a sumptuous spread, from a roast pig platter to smoked cod to a dessert of sesame balls and red bean jelly cake. “It’s like, lavish, luxurious ingredients,” Tiffany says.
The outfits: For the ceremony at the Winslow, the bride wore a strapless mermaid gown, while Spencer sported a cobalt-blue suit with matching suede shoes. “It was a nice, I think, reflection of our styles,” Tiffany says. Later in the reception, the newlyweds changed into traditional Ugandan garb: for Tiffany, a golden-hued garment called a busuuti, and for Spencer, a white robe called a kanzu. The bride’s white dress made another appearance at the beginning of the banquet on the second day, but she soon traded it for a vibrant red cheongsam, a traditional Chinese garment that she paired with gold bangles and some Nike sneakers, while Spencer donned a black suit.
Vendors: Band, Elijah Jamal Balbed Quartet; cake, Cakes by Joanna; caterer, Copper Kitchen; Chinese banquet, China Garden Han Gong; decorations and florals, Assembly by K; DJ, Caroli Mpoza; dress, Azazie; lion dancers, Hung Ci Lion Dance Troupe; performers, Jolly Cultural Dancers; photographer, Mdree Photography; reception venue, the Winslow.
