By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Sparks flew for an El Dorado couple with a special wedding ceremony on Independence Day. Monday afternoon, Mark Poe and Starla Thomas were united in marriage at the T&L Fireworks stand just north of the Great Bend city limits.
"We were going to get married in the park on the bridge," Mark said. "The T&L people, along with Starla's cousin (Rhonda Shelton), decided maybe we should have the wedding at the fireworks stand. They started putting all these things together and getting ready for us."
While Independence Day is Mark's favorite holiday, it was not the couple's first choice for a wedding date. The pair was originally scheduled to wed on April 2, but Starla lost her father, Lloyd Thomas, and her stepmother, Jackie Thomas, in late February.
"They passed away 11 days apart, and Starla decided she just couldn't do it," said Mark. "We changed the date to July 30. We had a big 80s-themed wedding planned in El Dorado. Just about a week ago, Starla thought let's do it on the Fourth of July in Great Bend, with family."
And so they did. Shelton baked the wedding cake ahead of Monday's ceremony, and an announcement from T&L staff brought shopping to a brief halt around 1 p.m.
"She got up and made an announcement for everybody to stop shopping, to stop what they were doing to take five minutes so we could hold the wedding there," Mark said. "It was strange because everything just came to a standstill. Everybody just stopped."
Mark and Starla return home to El Dorado as newlyweds, but not before shooting off some free fireworks from T&L.
"They were great people," Mark said. "They went above and beyond. They let us have our wedding in their building, they stopped business for five minutes or so, they gave us a $100 gift certificate for fireworks, and they also gave us about a $45 firework that was called Shotgun Wedding."