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Tampa Pair Seeking Dream Wedding Takes Early Lead

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 2, 2008

TAMPA - A Tampa couple vying for a $100,000 dream wedding jumped to an early but slim lead in the Us magazine online voting, which opened this morning. They are competing against two other couples.

Courtney Dempsey, 33, and Gary Courtney, 37, beat out thousands of other couples in their hunt for an elaborate wedding, and a final push last month put them into the top three.

This round of voting began at midnight, and by 7:30 a.m. today, the Dempsey-Courtney ticket had registered 64 votes against 44 votes for a couple from Massachusetts and 12 for a couple from Queens, N.Y.

The local couple's touching engagement story has captured the Bay area, which handed over more than 100,000 votes in the final days of the previous round of voting.

She is director of sales at Stumps Supper Club and associated businesses, and he works for Cigna, and she is aware that her name will be Courtney Courtney once they exchange their "I do's."

But the engaging part of the couple's story began four years ago, when Dempsey was diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma and given a year to live. Difficult treatments followed, and she's still on medication, but the cancer appears to be in remission.

The treatment left her with a sizeable medical debt, but none of that discouraged Courtney, who began dating her a year after her diagnosis.

"We have no secrets about her health," he said in a recent interview. "I didn't know exactly what I was getting myself into, but I know where I'm going from here."

The contest is run by Us magazine and online votes will be logged over the next seven days. Voters can vote more than once but are limited to one vote per computer per day.

People can cast their ballots at www.usmagazine.com/wedding-2008-top-20.

In an e-mail to supporters this morning, Dempsey wrote: "On a side note ... if (for) some crazy reason we win this thing ... the bummer is that we will only be able to invite 150 people. But rest assured, with the hopeful blessing of my bosses, we will have a party at either Splitsville, Stumps, Tinatapas or Howl at the Moon so we can invite as many of you that we can keep track of."

Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760 or kmorelli@tampatrib.com.

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