Noob here.

What I want to accomplish is simple: my incoming message notifications are all vibes ... but I would like messages from particular people to have a sound associated with them. Doing this for ringtones was easy.

But here is the trick: when I set the active profile to Vibrate (or Quiet), then I want the special notifications to go silent as well. There doesn't seem to be a way to do this. If my profile is based on the "Active" profile, then I can't specify special incoming message handling. If I create an exception profile for my special contacts, then it won't go silent when the active profile is silent because the exception profile seems to override the active profile.

Is there something I'm not understanding?

I believe when u set your profile to "vibrate" for instance, just make sure all notifications are set to vibrate, ie calls, emails, sms messages.... All notifications should then just notify you with a vibration. Also under the main profile menu there are all your exceptions- you can just uncheck those and this should no longer override the profile you have selected.