The bride wore white. The groom wore a tuxedo.

And many of the guests wore name badges stamped with the words "We work for you. Always."

That's because on Friday wedding bells rang not in church, but amid stacks of men's underwear and racks of girls' dresses in the Jefferson Avenue Wal-Mart.

Amy Thompson and John R. Crump III, both Wal-Mart employees, decided to wed at work because their co-workers are like a second family.

"Why wouldn't I get married here?" asked Thompson, as she primped before the 1 p.m. ceremony. "All my friends are here."

Along with being a cornerstone of the discount business, Wal-Mart is apparently in the love business. Joe Olson, the full-time Wal-Mart department manager and part-time ordained minister who performed Friday's wedding ceremony, already has joined two other Wal-Mart couples in matrimony,

"This is the Wal-mart attitude," said Crump, a 24-year-old receiving clerk who has worked nights at the Jefferson Avenue store for about eight months. "We try to keep everything in the family."

In addition to about a dozen invited friends and relatives, about 100 customers armed with shopping carts lined the store aisle that employees temporarily roped off.

And for 10 minutes, Wal-Mart became the couple's little white chapel.

The petite Thompson emerged from the women's plus section escorted by store manager George Joyner, who filled in for Thompson's father, who could not attend the wedding.

Potted plants, borrowed from the lawn and garden department, lined the bride's path down the aisle as a tape of the "Bridal Chorus" played on a boom box on loan from the electronics department.

A store employee videotaped the ceremony with a camera on loan from the photo department.

At the end of the aisle, Thompson and Crump met in front of cloth and paper decorations that hung from the ceiling.

Throughout the brief ceremony, Thompson blushed and Crump looked a bit nervous as he made vows of love and commitment to his 20-year-old bride.

No one was injured by falling prices and within minutes it was all over. The couple retreated to the store's stockroom to the sound of the "Wedding March."

As the crowd cheered, the newlyweds passed beneath a Wal-Mart sign that seemed a harbinger of good things to come.

It read, "You must be satisfied. Our policy guarantees it."