Barstools and wedding bells

Molly Shore

Don’t tell Jennifer Ramirez and Tim Partee that you can’t find true

love in a bar.

The couple, who met five years ago at Tin Horn Flats Bar and

Grill, married there Sunday morning in front of about three dozen

family members and friends.

Partee’s 6-year-old son, Westen, walked Ramirez down the aisle,

and his 8-year-old daughter, Jennalin, was the maid of honor during a

ceremony officiated by ordained minister Frank Woods, known as “The

Marrying Guy.”

“Like the morning, it’s a new beginning,” Woods said.

Partee, who was ill and had to make a take a trip to the emergency

room the evening before, said nothing would deter him from his

wedding.

“Neither rain, nor hail, nor pneumonia will stop me from getting

married,” he said.

The union, though, got off to a rocky start. The first time Partee

asked her for a date, Ramirez, 39, declined.

“At first I told him no, because he was pretty much of a jerk,”

she said. “But over the course of time and with the changes he had

made, I [decided] I liked him.”

When he asked her out again, Ramirez accepted, and after a

three-year courtship, Partee proposed.

When they considered where to get married, Partee told her, “I’ve

got the perfect place. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this

before.”

Ramirez said her first reaction to getting married in a bar was a

negative one.

“People don’t get married in a bar,” she said. “Then I immediately

thought about our whole span of time there, and realized, ‘Oh my

gosh, that is so perfect.’”

Although he no longer frequents the bar, Partee says the people he

met there are special to him.

Owners Darla Cook and husband Ed Bigger offered him friendship and

hired him as a cook when he needed a job, Partee said.

“When I stopped drinking,” Partee said, “I found out what

incredible people they are.”

Cook and Bigger were happy to have the wedding at their

establishment.

“We’ve owned the bar five years, but it’s been around since 1938,”

she said.

To Cook’s knowledge, there had never been a wedding at Tin Horn

Flats before Sunday.