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Forget the dress: Bride stops to help on the way to her reception

Sarah Ray, a paramedic in Tennessee, stopped on the way to her wedding reception to help victims of a car wreck. 

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(Marcy Martin Photography via AP)
In this Oct. 3, 2015 photo provided by Marcy Martin Photography, her daughter Sarah Ray, in her wedding dress, attends to a car crash in Clarksville, Tenn. Ray's father and grandparents where in a car crash on their way to Ray's wedding reception. Ray, who is a paramedic, went to the scene to check on her relatives.
  • By Staff Associated Press

| CLARKSVILLE, Tenn.

When Sarah Ray's father and grandparents were in a car crash on the way to her wedding reception, the off-duty Tennessee paramedic rushed to the scene in her wedding dress.

"My dad called my husband and said there had been an accident," Sarah Ray said. "All he told him was there had been a wreck, and the car was totaled. We didn't know anything about injuries."

Ray found her grandmother in an ambulance with injuries from the air bag and seat belt that were serious enough to send her to the hospital, but not life-threatening.

"One of the first things she said to me was sorry she ruined my wedding day," Ray said. Ray assured her grandmother she had done no such thing.

"I just hate that everyone uses the word 'hero,' " she told the Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle. "It's not heroic. That's just what we do every day, and it was family. I believe any other first responder would do the same thing. It just happened that I was in a wedding dress."

As she walked back to the car in the drizzling rain, holding her wedding dress off the ground, ambulance and fire truck behind her, Ray's mother snapped a photograph.

The photo was posted to the Montgomery County government's Facebook page with the caption, "How dedicated are you to your job?" The caption briefly explains the circumstances of the photo and concludes, "Thank you, Sarah, for loving what you do!"

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