Florida couple gets married at hospital after groom is seriously injured on the way to their wedding

Kapri DeRamus was involved in a head-on crash an hour before the ceremony, but he and Tyasia Thomas still exchanged vows that evening.

Tyasia Thomas got the call an hour before she was supposed to walk down the aisle.

Her fiancé, Kapri DeRamus, had been struck head-on in Altamonte Springs, Florida, on Saturday, Sept. 5, while driving to the venue where the two planned to marry.

According to a press release his legal team shared with PEOPLE, the collision happened around 4:30 p.m. and left him with both arms broken, along with a fractured jaw and a broken rib.

Thomas and her family drove to the hospital rather than to the ceremony.

What happened next is the part that has drawn attention. Instead of calling off the day, the couple gathered their friends at the hospital that evening and went through with it. The release describes them exchanging vows in a multipurpose room rather than the events center they had booked, with DeRamus’ grandfather officiating.

The Altamonte Springs Police Department is investigating the crash. DeRamus was discharged Wednesday, Sept. 9, four days after the wedding that wasn’t supposed to happen where it did.

The aftermath has been less romantic than the ceremony. Thomas’ brother launched a GoFundMe for the couple, explaining that the honeymoon they had planned is off. Between hospital bills, a vehicle that was totaled and income lost while DeRamus recovers, the financial picture shifted considerably in the span of an afternoon.

Wedding days go wrong in small ways constantly, and couples absorb them. A head-on collision an hour before the ceremony is a different category of wrong, the kind that gives anyone permission to reschedule and try again when the groom can use his hands.

They chose not to take it. What they got instead was a ceremony officiated by family, attended by the people who had already cleared their evening, held in a room nobody would have picked.

DeRamus married Thomas with both arms broken, which is either a complication or a fairly direct answer to the question the vows were asking.