A Cinderella moment materialized at the Farmers Market this weekend.

JEFFREY PORTER/DMN

It was a Cinderella wedding, complete with pumpkins, as Susan Zidlicky and James PhillipsHoevelman said their vows Saturday at the Dallas Farmers Market.

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It happened at sundown on Saturday – after the last car had pulled out of the parking lot, the last knick-knack stand had been rolled away, and the last potted pansy was fenced off for the night.

That's when the maintenance man turned into a minister, the beekeeper came back as a wedding guest, and the farm coordinator walked out of the vendor shed in a bridal gown.

"I've never done a wedding like this – it's wonderful," said George Weldon as he watched guests tape a pink walkway to the pavement outside the storefronts of the Handcrafter Market.

Weldon had been at the market since 6 a.m., hauling pumpkins and hitching up ponies for an annual festival in his capacity as a city maintenance worker.

When his shift ended at 5 p.m., he changed into his suit, fetched his Bible and returned as a minister for New Haven Baptist Church.

"It's a sweet thing," said Susan Pollard, an urban beekeeper who has sold at the market for years. She said she'd bonded with the bride, Susan Zidlicky, who works as the market's farmer liaison (or "the beekeeper's keeper," as Pollard put it).

Dressed in denim and button-down shirts, the farmers and vendors were easy to spot among about 50 more formal guests who gathered in front of the makeshift wedding altar, dramatically back-dropped by the market greenhouse and the bank towers of the Dallas skyline.

"I've been here 33 years. This is the first wedding," said facility manager Benny Craft, clutching a carved wooden cane in the back row.

The father of the bride, Steve Zidlicky, arrived in a Stetson and a sports coat. A cattle farmer from Missouri, he looked a little lost among the ensemble.

"It's very unique," he said. "Just like my daughter."

"I've never seen anything like it," echoed John Zidlicky, the bride's 81-year-old grandfather. "Probably not many people have."

Neither father nor grandfather had been surprised when Zidlicky told them she wanted to get married at the market.

Though she left the family's tiny hometown of Bolivar, Mo., years ago and is close to completing her master's degree in agriculture, Zidlicky remains a farm girl at heart.

"It just makes me feel like I'm at home to have a wedding here at the market, to be surrounded by farmers," she said. "We don't need any big huge splash."

As it turned out, she got one anyway. In a decidedly modern twist to a fairy-tale wedding, three F/A-18 Hornets happened to roar overhead minutes before the ceremony, dumbfounding and deafening everyone in attendance.

"Well that was like it was sanctioned," remarked the groom, James PhillipsHoevelman, an El Paso native with a military background.

As the sun slipped behind the skyline and the Bridal Chorus issued from a sidewalk stereo, the color and commotion of the gathering gave way to a ceremony that was, in the end, much like any other wedding.

Zidlicky emerged, beaming, from the glass doors of the vendor shed. Her wedding dress raked up stray autumn leaves as she walked down the pink pathway to her waiting fiancé.

Flanked by pumpkins and purple bridesmaids, bride and groom faced each other, held hands and repeated their vows.

Zidlicky's "I do" was muted by the whoosh of Saturday night traffic.