Mother stands in for a runaway bride and marries the groom by proxy, then both set out to convince her daughter to reconsider. Later they mistake the missing bride and her companion for two escaped convicts and pursue them with a sex obsessed teenage boy in tow. All paths cross at a remote motel run by a jilted church deacon.
After a one night stand with Alex, Isabel realizes that she is pregnant and they decide to get married. However, along with the marriage comes compromise of one's own cultural traditions.
Starting his new job as an instructor at a New England school for the deaf, James Leeds meets Sarah Norman, a young deaf woman who works at the school as a member of the custodial staff. In spite of Sarah's withdrawn emotional state, a romance slowly develops between the pair.