Andie MacDowell, Classmate Tie Knot

By Stephen M. Silverman

Tuesday November 13, 2001 12:14 PM EST

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Last Saturday, actress-model Andie MacDowell, 43, married her high-school classmate, Rhett DeCamp Hartzog, 42, at a private ceremony attended by some 450 family members and friends in Asheville, N.C., reports PEOPLE. The hour-long, evening wedding took place at the Central United Methodist Church and was followed by a reception at Biltmore Forest Country Club. The couple intends to live nearby. "It was just real sweet and simple," MacDowell's sister, Babs Rogers Richard, who lives in Waxhaw, N.C., told the Associated Press about the ceremony. MacDowell's 15-year-old son, Justin, walking down the aisle in crutches after having torn a ligament in his leg during a basketball game the night before, gave his mother away. Justin's father is model and construction worker Paul Qualley, from whom MacDowell was divorced in 2000, after 14 1/2 years of marriage. In all, they had three children. "Both her daughters (Sarah Margaret, 7, and Rainey, 12), the nieces and nephews were involved in the wedding," Richard said. The bride wore a strapless, satiny oyster white Vera Wang gown, and her hair was accented with shiny antique hair clips. MacDowell graduated from Gaffney High School in South Carolina in 1976, a year before Hartzog. They became reacquainted last year (MacDowell invited Hartzog to lunch in Atlanta, where he sold jewelry), and they announced their engagement this past July.