When Love is Meant to Be: Magical Wedding Stories

If there is a more organized person than me, that would be my dad. He has a place and system for everything, and I mean it, everything! He is careful, plans, and is a very cautious person. So, imagine my surprise as I learned the story of him losing his wedding ring, not once, not twice, but three times! But losing his wedding band was not, by far, the crazy part of this story.

There is always a first. A few years into their marriage, my parents were at a cute beach on the Atlantic Ocean in South America, and my dad went into the water to cool down on a hot Summer day. A rather inconspicuous wave startled him but did not knock him off his feet. Instead, the wave took with it his wedding ring! When he realized what happened, he looked around the immense mass of water as if the ring would magically appear. It took him a bit to realize that the ring was gone. After a minute or so, in an act of who knows what, he put his ringless hands in the water and grabbed a handful of sand. As the water drained down his fingers, a shiny trinket started glowing in his hand. His ring came back to him. Yes, I know, it sounds like I am making this up, but I am not that good!

Photo: iStock

Second time: In the seventies, there was an amusement theme park in the prominent Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where now is Parque Thays. It was called Italpark, the “it” place to be. My hip parents were at the park, having fun, when they got into the bumper cars. Bump comes, bump goes, and so flies the ring off my dad’s finger! Again? Yes. He could not get off the ride that had just started until it ran its course, so he stayed in his car without any reaction, prey of all the bumper enthusiasts who had a blast bouncing onto his unmoving car. As he exited the ride trying to make sense of it, a lady yelled at the top of her lungs: “Did someone lose their wedding band?” And there it was, like a prize waiting to be retrieved in the fair.

The third time is a charm. This one is not as glamorous but yet as crazy. Dad was washing his hands in his office restroom and the ring slipped down the drain. Yes, in an office building, on a Friday afternoon… He had to wait for the janitor's help, a lost cause over the weekend. He went home at the end of the day to suffer his loss. Monday came along and he went back to his office with no hope at all. But there it was, on his desk overlooking the airy Thays park; this special ring was waiting for him once again.

My parents never resized their wedding bands because they wanted to keep them original, as the day their vows were exchanged. They never got them professionally cleaned either, like my mom’s earrings, because every little scratch had a reason to be and a story behind it. But they had to do something before their fortune ran out.

They decided not to try their luck for a fourth time so, after decades of being together, they gifted me their rings, as a keepsake, so I could pass on the stories to my kids and them to theirs, and make sure that the precious rings will stay together forever.

Either my dad is the luckiest person on Earth, or he was holding a magic wedding ring. I choose to believe in magic.

#TimelessImpress