'A life like any other family': Gay couple returns to rural Alabama, marriage license in hand [View all]

[n2doc]

The day-to-day lives of Robbie Vining, April Dockery and Dockery's two daughters are much like that of any other modern Alabama family. Vining brings home the bacon as a technical representative for an Alabaster glass company that makes windows for the Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance and Dockery stays at home with the kids, dogs and cats. One daughter loves her Playstation 3, the other plays shortstop.

The Woodstock brood describe themselves as the prototypical young family chasing the American dream, only Vining and Dockery are gay. And on Monday they made their pairing official, receiving one of the first 110 marriage licenses issued to same-sex couples at the Jefferson County Probate Court in Birmingham.

"It took a while but we finally did it and it's the best decision I've ever made," Vining said Tuesday. "The whole experience was really amazing. It happened and I was like, 'holy crap, did that really happen?'"

Their union comes at the end of a long, often bumpy road that began in 2008 when Vining and Dockery, now 26 and 32 respectively, met by chance on a Woodstock car lot and recognized almost immediately that they had a special chemistry. At the time, Dockery was married to the man with whom she had her daughters, Courtney and Summer, now 12 and seven years old, and Vining still mostly went by Robin, but there was a spark between them that they couldn't ignore.

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