Has anyone here lost their wedding ring? Did you ever find it? How did your spouse take it? I lost mine about a year ago, 4+ years into our marriage. I was at work when I just realized “oh shit its not on my hand!” I tore the place apart looking for it. Dug through piles of metal shavings in the machine shop where I’d been working that morning. Popped open the drain trap of the sink where I’d washed my hands, and snaked it out. No luck though. I was pretty pissed, but my wife was very cool about it – her own father had lost his in a haystack. She has since loaned me a family heirloom ring she had lying around, which I wear until I can get a replacement.
My husband lost his ring about 6 weeks after the wedding. He thinks he lost it in a cab, and it hasn’t been seen since. I wasn’t too ticked off…I knew it was an accident. He’s not into jewelry, and I don’t think he really wanted to wear it, anyway. I figure, any time he is not with me he could always take it off and I would never know, so the trust factor just doesn’t come into it for me. No biggie.
I used to take my ring off when I would do really grubby things like working on the car & such. One day I could not remember where I put it. We ended up buying a new ring for me (because my wife was having a fit that I was “ringless”). Then we moved a glass pan that had been sitting on the counter in our kitchen and the ring was sitting on the handle of it. You could not see it because the white gold of the ring blended into the glass handle so well. I put that ring back on because I really liked that one better & have not removed it since. It washes well in the shower!
Haven’t lost my wedding ring, but I did lose my engagement ring at the wedding.
I have strange-shaped fingers. My engagement ring is currently a size 7 3/4, while my wedding ring is a 7. Before the wedding, when I wore the engagement ring down where the wedding ring is now, the engagement ring was a size 7. When I tried to put the wedding ring on with it, I found the engagement ring didn’t fit, so I transferred it to my pinky finger until I could get it resized.
We had a reception at the temple where we got married, with the dancing and wedding cake and all that. After that, we had a dinner planned at an Italian restaurant in town (doing it that way meant we didn’t have to deal with caterers or seating charts or have dancing for most of the evening, which Mr. Neville didn’t want). As the reception was winding up, I changed out of my wedding dress into another dress for the dinner (me + big poofy white dress + tomato sauce = disaster). A while after I did, I looked down at my left hand- no engagement ring. I did the best job I could of running (I was wearing heels, which I almost never do, and my feet hurt like #@$*! from having a coin in my shoe during the ceremony- what sadist came up with that, anyway?) back to the room where I had changed, on the theory that the ring had probably come off when I was changing. I enlisted the maid of honor and one of the bridesmaids, who were there at the time, to help me look everywhere in the room for it. Fortunately, my maid of honor found it in the dress bag with my wedding dress.
I lost mine at my wedding reception.
Long story short – the wedding was looming, so I went to the jeweler to pick up the rings when I was told “Oh, you didn’t finish paying for them so we sold them to someone else”.
After giving the owner a vicious verbal beating over the definition of the term “layaway”, I got my money back. I told them to shove their stupid jewelry store up their stupid asses, and went looking for wedding rings. The day before my wedding.
I found what we were looking for, but they were just a little bit too big. “No biggie”, I thought, “we’ll just get them resized after the honeymoon”.
Well, at some point during the reception my ring slipped off. It wasn’t until everyone had left and they were cleaning the reception hall that it showed up.
Because the rings kept slipping off our ring fingers, if you look closely at our honeymoon photos you’ll notice my wife and I are wearing our rings on our middle fingers. Yes, many jokes were made about that.
Nothing to contribute here except to note that immediately after my wedding, my grandmother told my wife not to take it personally if I lost my wedding ring. I’d lost every ring I’d owned up to that point, including my class ring.
Haven’t lost my wedding ring after 13 years, though. Fingers have gotten too fat.
Am I the only one who took one look at this thread and felt a sudden compulsion to go find mine?
(it was in the egg cup next to the sink, where it always is after I do dishes. Still.)
My mother lost hers by throwing it at my father. I still think he took it just to freak her out.
Our rings came from my grandparents, as my parents’ rings had a bit of a bad history.
I lost mine in the ocean in the British Virgin Islands. I had just slathered a bunch of sun block on my wife’s back and then went snorkling. Some time later I noticed that it was gone. It was just a plain white gold band and only cost like $120 to replace. The wife wasn’t too upset. I was more upset than her.
I sold the replacement after the divorce for $60.
My father lost his one time after about 30 years of marriage.
I, hero of the family, found it. Where? I t was in the middle of the driveway, just laying there.
I’ll never forget going into the house and holding it out for my Mom and Dad. They were so happy!
When we were first married, I had never worn a ring before, so I used to take it off when I got home and put it on my computer desk. One day, it was missing. We looked everywhere in the apartment for it. No luck. Months went by, when one day on the way to the kitchen, I spied something gleaming out of the corner of my eye. I looked down and there, wedged between the back of the bottom bookshelf and the wall, was my ring. Our cat used to play this game where he would pick up things, drop them behind the shelf, and bat them out from underneath with his paw. So, he had got up on the desk, found my ring and carried it over to the bookshelf to play with it, when it got stuck. I’ve had it on my finger ever since.
Later, that apartment was broken into. At night, my wife would take off her rings and loop them over her watchband. Some crackhead took the watch and the rings. We had to buy her a new set. Fortunately, that style was still being sold by the store where we bought our rings originally, so her new rings are identical. She hasn’t taken them off since, either.
I “lost” mine by the side of a highway in the rain.
I was already having a bad day before I suffered a flattened tire while rushing home in December.
I pulled over and surveyed the damage. Clearly, I was going to have to wrestle the spare out of its cubbyhole beneath the trunk and change the tire. And I was in a terrible hurry to get some errands completed. Christmas traffic was clogging the roads, and although the snow had cleared off the pavement, the grass was covered with cold, dull, wet snow and a constant drizzle of icy rain fell.
Salt and road sand left over from the snow covered the tire, the car, and the road shoulder.
Fearing my ring would get scratched, I took it off. In the freezing rain, I changed the tire with difficulty; finishing at last with numb and stinging fingers. I threw the flat tire into the trunk and staggered to the driver’s seat.
I was at home, washing my cold and filthy hands in warm water, when I noticed my ring was gone.
I checked my pockets – nothing. Sink and bathroom counter – nope. I ran out and checked the car, the floor inder the seat, the trunk, the tire itself, everywhere.
No dice.
I’d have to go BACK OUT in stalled traffic and try to find the random spot of pavement where I’d changed the tire!
Out I went…plenty pissed at this point. Eventually I was sure I’d found the right place. Got out and crouched down…no luck.
Wandered all over. Searched snowbank, grass, up and down the shoulder a good distance. Double- and triple-checked whether this looked like the spot.
Nothing. I was without my wedding ring!
I gave up and went home. With trepidation I explained the whole sorry tale to my wife. She took it pretty well.
Later that night, when I took my pants off, I found the ring IN MY POCKET.
The same pocket I’d carefully searched!
This is hard to visualize, but I’m sure most of you have experienced this at some point, perhaps with small change. What had happened was that the ring was all the way down in a corner of the pocket, and somehow that corner had gotten “flipped over”, so that what felt like the seam forming the pockt’s boundary was just a twisted-over part of the pocket, and the ring was just beyond that.
I would have been mad at myself, but I was so happy to have the ring I just went to bed relieved.
Sailboat
My husband lost his in the Atlantic Ocean (Long Beach Island, NJ) after about 1 year of marriage. I remember being annoyed, but I wasn’t all broken up about it. We said that if we lasted until our 5th wedding anniversary, we would both get replacements.
It will be 5 years on September 9th, I guess we better start looking!
Me, I have misplaced both my wedding ring and engagement ring many times in my house.
We are both losers, it seems. We’re meant for each other!
I lost my ring on our honeymoon in Maui this past June! No wait, we were in Kauai that week. Well anyway, we were one on the Kipu ATV tours, which I recommend if you are in the area. Part of the tour takes you to the location where they filmed some scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark. In particular the scene where he swings out on a rope to catch the plane.
The tour guide asked if anyone wanted to take a swing on the rope and a dip in the river and I was the first in line. Grab rope, swing over water, let go and in I went! Weeee! Up I come…“I lost my ring!” It just slipped right off! I immediately dove under to see if I could get it but it was hopeless at that point. It was a good 7-8 feet deep so I couldn’t feel around with my feet and the silt was obscuring everything so I couldn’t see it either. I was pretty upset. My wife was very understanding. After all it was an accident.
Luckily the guides went back the next day with some snorkeling gear and found it! Yay! Honeymoon back on track.
Gave them a nice tip.
Mine hasn’t left my finger since my wedding almost two years ago. My brother, however…
My brother lost his wedding ring on his honeymoon. They drove to Las Vegas, and after checking into the hotel, he discovered that his ring was missing. His wife was pretty pissed. They searched, but with no idea where it got lost, it was pretty hopeless.
And yet, a year later, they found it. In the trunk of the car. Apparently, it had slipped off his finger while he was unloading their luggage. Amazing, to lose it in a city hundreds of miles from home, it stays missing for a year, and then, to find it again.
When I bought my wedding ring, I purposely bought it about a size too big. The salesman told me “that ring is too big, it’ll fall off” but (a) I hate having something tight around your finger, and (b) I have seen too many people unable to take their wedding rings off when they really want to, e.g. doing manual labour or some such.
The first time I lost out was on the honeymoon when I was shaking my hands after washing them with a wet towel after a fancy seafood dinner on a restaurant patio. Took me a while to find it, while my wife was laughing at me.
Second time was a month after the honeymoon when I throw away something at the grocery store and didn’t notice my ring had slipped off until I got home. I had to go back to the grocery store late at night and dig through the trash can in front of the store. I was lucky they hadn’t emptied it yet.
Third time was in a movie theatre, I like to take my ring off and fiddle around with it. It rolled down all the aisles making an annoying tinkling sound but I found it at the very front of the theatre after the movie was over.
Eventually I bought a thin smaller ring that I wear in front of my wedding ring to keep it from falling off. I refuse to have my wedding ring resized because I want to be able to take it off and spin it on the table to amuse myself during boring meetings at work, even when I get old and my knuckles are swollen by arthritis.
I truly think this thread is worth linking to, if only so I can hear about how someone had to go the emergency room after following by example.
I’m going to be the voice of gloom and doom here, Emilio, and say that I hope you’re not wearing your ring while you work with machinery. They ain’t kidding about the risk of losing a finger.
Oh, I know what some will say. “People can be such fearmongers! I’m sure they exaggerate the danger!” My BIL even said something like that once (he wore his ring to work every day, as a heavy equipment operator): “Well, I might lose a finger, but I’m gonna keep right on wearing my ring!” Three or four days later, he did exactly that–lose a finger. He jumped down from the skidder he was operating–as he’d done a thousand times–and caught his wedding ring on something at the top. The only thing left of his ring finger was half the bone, which had been completely stripped. There was nothing to save.
My own husband lost his ring when he was driving a tractor. Fortunately, it had been weakened by resizing and broke, rather than taking his finger (this was before what happened to his brother). We decided that we’d been extremely lucky and didn’t replace the ring (he’d never get to wear it anyway!).
Me–I just got too fat to wear mine. But I’ll keep trying to lose weight, and I still have my wedding set put away for when I do! 
Mine went missing after I had been re-potting some large house plants. Luckily I had one of those small detectors that check walls for cables and other metalwork. I ran this round each pot and after the third it started beeping . I dug down and there it was.
My husband and I have each lost one. I lost mine when I was pregnant. My hands had swollen, so I was wearing my ring on my pinky. I was in the yard pulling weeds and flinging them into a pile. At some point during the flinging, I noticed I was ringless. I had no idea in which direction I’d lost it. A few months later, when we had the cash, we went back to Zales and got a replacement, which I still have 21 years later. Alas, my old knuckles have swollen so I can’t wear it any longer - it’s on my dresser. I’ve been wanting to get a replacement - a plain band would be fine.
My husband lost his on the road. He has a bad habit of taking his ring off to put lotion on his hands. He called back to both hotels, but it hadn’t been turned in at either one. He’s very careful with the ring he wears now - it belonged to my paternal grandfather. And it just happens to be a plain band, so I’d like to get something to match it for myself.
To Miss Purl: Damn you. shakes fist My stomach hurts from laughing so hard. And now I’m eyeing my only ring thoughtfully. :smack: