Anyone who knows Sara Rice knows she stands out in a crowd like a pair of red cowboy boots. She's not into traditional anything - especially a traditional wedding."Even the word 'bridesmaid' grosses me out," she said.
Tuesday evening, with a pink cotton candy bouquet in hand, the Dallas hair stylist married Mexico City's Luis Martinez in the shadow of Big Tex at the State Fair of Texas.
The renegade ceremony, quicker than a midway ride and officiated by the Rev. Pinky Diablo, capped a whirlwind romance that has been similarly wacky and spontaneous.
"It's just, like, perfect," Martinez said. "Our personalities and how our love is. We're just crazy, and we have a good time."
It was possibly the only knot-tying in Texas history to include half-price rides and $3 off admission with an empty Dr Pepper can.
Diablo, dressed as a mini-Tex in trademark yellow shirt, red kerchief and jeans, explained: Two years ago, Rice spent a long-awaited vacation in Mexico. "What she came back with," he said, "were the hopeful beginnings of what we are celebrating today - the love of a little macho bull for his American sweet tart."
It was that kind of occasion.
Rice, 34, wore white still smudged with makeup from a Day of the Dead celebration and possibly some mustard. (The dress, bought for $50 at a Garland thrift store, was last year's Halloween costume.) Martinez, 25, wore a gray silk suit over a Budweiser beer shirt.
An artist specializing in skeleton imagery, Diablo (real name: Tom Sale) has become an unofficial lay preacher to the local arts community, while his wife, Dottie Love (real name: Dottie Love) raises miniature Zebu cattle at their Ennis County ranch.
Two weeks ago, Love enlisted Martinez to help show her cattle at the fair. It was his first time to the Texas fair, and he literally ate it up.
"I tried everything," he said. "I was like a kid. I had fried heartburn after."
Rice, meanwhile, is the kind of person who makes an impression, even among her artsy crowd, a circle of friends whose haunts include local vintage shops like Dolly Python in East Dallas.
"The first time I met her," Love said, "I said to her, 'You are so beautiful.' She looks like an angel, though she has lots of tattoos."
"Sara is probably the wildest person I know," added Sale, who teaches art at Hill College in Hillsboro. "Actually, getting married at the fair seems pretty tame and normal to me for her."
The whole thing had come together as chancy as a ring toss. Two years ago, several days into a Yucatan vacation, the Georgia-born Rice had tired of the beach and the books. She was ready to go out and party.
Trouble was, none of her friends wanted to go with her. She couldn't go alone; a recent spate of kidnappings had been all over the news.
Then, she remembered an exchange she'd had with pal Holly Jefferson not long before; Jefferson had befriended Martinez on a previous trip to the area and suggested Rice call him.
They agreed to meet at a club. Within minutes, they were joking in their in-your-face, twisted way, acting like old friends. "It was like we actually knew each other before," said Martinez, a hospitality graduate working at a local hotel.
It was an oh-my-God-I-love-that-too kind of night.
"I was comfortable," Rice said. "I knew I was not going to get kidnapped."
It was the first real vacation she'd had in years, and she figured she'd never see Martinez again. She felt no need to hold back. She was just herself. "I found someone who liked me for the full, 100 percent me," Rice said.
They spent her remaining three days in Mexico together, touring Mayan villages and swimming in Caribbean sinkholes. Before she left, he'd given her the shirt off his back.
More visits followed, plus lots of Skype time, and they decided it was a relationship worth holding on to, never mind the age difference. Rice suggested petitioning for a "fiance visa," which allows approved foreign citizens engaged to Americans to visit the U.S. and wed within 90 days of arrival.
"Are you asking me to marry you?" he asked.
"I guess," she replied.
For eight months, they jumped through the requisite hoops, and she visited his parents - a dentist and an electric company employee - in Mexico City. "They're basically the family I always wanted," Rice said.
Before they met, Rice had started to think that true love was not her lot in life. But Martinez's easygoing demeanor, she said, perfectly complemented her flamboyant spirit.
"I like to say he's so cool you can put him in your pocket and take him anywhere," Rice said. "It's like we're puzzle pieces. We fit in so many ways."
They elected not to alert fair officials to their plans for fear of getting stalled in bureaucracy, but it was Big Tex who halted the proceedings on Tuesday, bellowing his loud, extended welcome to fairgoers just as the vows got under way.
But then it was time. "By the power vested in me by Fletcher's Corny Dogs," Sale said, "I pronounce you husband and wife."
Rice kicked up a red boot, then tossed her cotton candy bouquet into the crowd of about 100 cheering friends and curious onlookers.
Then the married couple headed toward the lights of Fair Park. Carnies clapped their congratulations as Martinez carried his bride across the threshold of the blinking midway.