June 28, 2010 9:41 PM

Vows that Come from the Heart

By
Steve Hartman
(CBS)  There's something about a beach - when the sun begins to set and the sand turns cool between your toes - there's just something indefinably, yet undeniably romantic.

"Who doesn't dream about being married barefooted on the white sands?" asked Krista Davis. "It's just picture perfect."

Davis and Blake Munroe of Comanche, Texas started dreaming of a beach wedding the night he popped the question - and stopped about six weeks ago, reports CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman.

"You couldn't talk to me without me just bawling," Davis said.

"She was very upset," Munroe said.

Special Section: Disaster in the Gulf

Davis and Munroe had planned on getting married here in the Florida Panhandle -- the Emerald Coast, as they call it - is the wedding destination of choice for about 20,000 couples annually. But now, many of those brides and grooms are getting cold feet.

"I tell them, 'Please come. Our beaches are OK,'" said Connie Turner Reeder, a wedding planner. "But they say, 'Yea, they're alright now but what about next week?'"

Since the spill, Turner Reeder's phones have been ringing off the hook with cancellations. She says 50 percent of her business has evaporated.

"I love this so much that the thought of not being able to do it is incredibly hurtful," Turner Reeder said.

With the phone as a constant reminder, Turner Reeder can't help but feel despair.

"I know you're concerned about the oil," she told someone who called.

Yet there is hope in the other half who aren't canceling - couples who for whatever reason - are coming here anyway.

At the last hour, our couple from Comanche decided getting married in the Florida Panhandle was not only an acceptable option, it was the right choice. Munroe was actually the catalyst for that. He got tired of hearing his fiancé beach about the beaches and told her this:

"You know, it's not just affecting us. It's affecting everybody that lives on the Gulf that counts on that for income," Munroe said.

"And when he told me that it made me realize… that it's not just about me," Davis said.

She may be the first bride in history to recognize that.

"I was being selfish," Davis said.

Davis thought about how they need tourists here now more than ever. And realized that tar balls or not - their love is the same.

"At the end of the day all that matters is that we're married," Davis said.

Other tougher decisions now lie ahead - but if they navigate those with the same empathy and class they showed here - Davis and Munroe should live happily ever after.

Copyright 2010 CBS. All rights reserved.
Add a Comment
by charlesgilbride April 8, 2011 12:55 AM EDT
Really This is a Nice Post.
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by geraldledbetter June 29, 2010 3:37 PM EDT
Love is a very crucial component to a relationship.

Love is defined as having a strong feeling, or an affection for a person, or a thing, but the rules are left to be experienced.

Anthropomorphic fallacy is the mistake humans make by attributing human thought, emotions, and motives to animals of the lower kingdom. In other words: animals of the lower kingdom don't have cerebral thinking.

I once read that, "love is patient, kind, altruistic, enduring, not boastful, neither seeks evil, nor seeks revenge, and when I was a child I spoke and understood as a child, but when I became an adult I put away childish things" ( I Cor 13:4-7 ).

Well, for better or worst, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, and to death does a married couple part is a lifetime commitment to make and shall not be undermined if a couple is really in love and follows the profound rules established no matter where he, or she gets married.

I'm an aspiring journalist.
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by mari1963 June 29, 2010 8:30 AM EDT
If that is their child in the photo, I'm glad they got married. Children should be raised in a married household. Congrats to them.
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