With wedding rings lost, strangers found fitting solution

Every good wedding has to have one teensy, tiny crisis.

For Calivé and Shannon Jackson, everything was going according to plan as they exchanged vows on the sands of Playa Del Carmen on Dec. 14, 2023. The couple had decided to elope, hopping a plane from their home in Trinidad and Tobago to the beaches of Mexico for a celebration all to themselves.

“We love to travel and be in love in different places,” Calivé Jackson told CNN. “We love all the things anyone with the appropriate amount of joie de vivre loves: making memories and collecting as many experiences as possible.”

They were about to collect another one.

By this point, the Jacksons were well aware that even intimate weddings have dozens of little details to account for. They had planned the event for a year and were sure they had everything down.

But what they couldn’t plan for was the enormity of the day, the emotions that come from setting aside planning for doing, for finally — finally — getting to focus completely on their love.

“Shannon and I were so unbelievably nervous,” Jackson said. “We were suddenly in the moment, shocked that we were really there and about to get married. So naturally everything was a blur.”

Oh, and there were tears. (Every good wedding needs some of those, too.) As they said their vows, the newly-minted Jacksons were, in Calivé’s words, “a blubbering mess.”

“It was pretty embarrassing how we were crying so hard,” she said.

Then, the officiant asked for their wedding rings to seal the deal.

The rings? The rings!! Shannon patted their pockets, one after the other and then again. No rings. The searching got a little more frantic.

“Mayday, mayday!” their photographer Ezequiel Marcellini called. “We’ve lost the rings!”

“Everything paused all at once then, everyone started looking; us, our wedding planner, our officiant,” Jackson said. “Someone ran back to our room and still didn’t find them, we searched our photographer’s backpack and didn’t find them either.”

Meanwhile, life around the wedding whirlwind continued. Vacationers roamed the beach, enjoying the day. Some had stopped to watch the nuptials from afar.

Then an Argentinian husband and wife saw something had gone sideways, and approached the distressed couple.

“They came over and were so excited for us, crying almost as hard as we were,” Jackson said.

Once they realized what was wrong, the Argentinian couple offered their own wedding rings without a second thought. Finishing the ceremony with a pair of borrowed rings wasn’t the Jacksons’ original plan, but that’s the thing about small crises: They really make you appreciate the moment.

Calivé and Shannon got back in their places, said what needed to be said and slid the rings on each others’ hands.

“We didn’t think they would fit,” Jackson said. “But they fit so perfectly it felt like some kind of magic.”

There was, of course, more crying after that. The two couples exchanged “thank yous” and “congratulations,” and posed for a few pictures that will undoubtedly have a special place in the Jackson’s wedding album.

By the time the excitement ebbed and the Argentinian couple had gone on their way (with their rings back), Calivé Jackson realized she didn’t even get their names.

She did, however, honor them with a post on X that attracted tons of love, both for the newlywed couple and the kind strangers who stepped in to make their wedding even more special.

“We are beyond grateful. Our wedding day was already special because we were there to celebrate our love, our happiness, the home we built with each other and we thought we were there alone,” Jackson told CNN.

“But it turns out we weren’t. People celebrate wherever love is, and we got to share our moment with so many people that were so happy for us. We can never thank those two enough for that.”

Oh, and the Jacksons did end up finding their rings. They were nestled in a pouch in the bottom corner of an equipment bag — at the wedding all along.