Wed Recap: War wounds at our wedding (the ring exchange)

This is not your boring old ring exchange part of the ceremony recap.  Oh no, I let my pride get the best of me during our ring exchange and ended up with the war wound to prove how stupid I was for being so vain and worried about how something would look to our guests in the middle of our ceremony.

See, it starts off all normal.  Pastor Lyle is taking the rings from Best Man K...

Mr Fix It begins to place the ring on my hand.

This is kind of pretty, isn't it?

But what's this?  Why is the bride pushing the ring on her finger herself?  Isn't that the groom's job?

Oh, this is a FANTASTIC shot of the bride during the ring exchange.  Don't you just love it?  I mean, seriously, what the heck was I doing?  It is obvious this ring does *not* want to get on my finger!

But alas, here's another horrible shot of me with my eyes closed where I am showing the guests that in fact, I was going to *MAKE* this ring fit even if it cost me a little blood!  Which by the way, it did!

You see, there's a little something special about my ring.  It was a pain in the butt to get sized!  We bought it at the LA jewelry market and I didn't have it sized for a very long time.  Oh yeah, nevermind that it was too big for me.  I mean it didn't fall off or anything but it was not secure by any means.  We didn't want to have it sized down because the setting was such that the 28 princess cut diamonds in their invisible setting along side the center stone could have been ruined or fallen out by altering the shape of the ring.  So we just left it.

But I knew that wouldn't last, so I eventually found a friend's jeweler who said we could 'add' a round bump arch type of thing on the inside of my ring on the bottom to make it fit better.  And when we added that extra white gold to the ring, it did in fact fit better.  In fact, too good...it was now too tight.  I had him shave off some of the extra gold we added and it seemed to be okay.  I have large knuckles and they kept insisting that if they made it any bigger it would slip around on my finger once it got past my knuckle.  So he told me if I needed to, just use some extra cold water and dish soap to slide the ring on and off.  Hey, that idea worked great!  I did this every morning and evening when I would take my ring on and off.

So come wedding day I had a plan.  I told my coordinator and pastor that I needed either a glass of ice water or a little bottle of dish soap or hand sanitizer at the table where we would take communion just before our ring exchange.  This way I could easily place some of the soap on my finger right after we took communion before we went back to our places on the altar.  Well, instead, my coordinator decided to just give the bottle of soap to my pastor to keep in his pocket so he could hand it to me if I needed it.  Great idea.  But I didn't want to put the stuff on my finger in front of all of our guests...I was trying to be covert about it.  So when it wasn't there at the communion table and we went back to do the ring exchange, well, I'll let you watch the video to see what happened next.

Can you believe that? I was totally bleeding from trying to shove and force the ring over my knuckle!  Mr Fix It's ring went on just fine. But mine, not so much. The rest of the ceremony Mr Fix It kept trying to hold my hands and I just remember that I kept pulling my left hand away from him trying not to get blood on my dress, or the ribbon on my flowers or on Mr Fix It.  As you can see in the video, at one point, I even turned my back to the guests and tried to suck the blood off of my finger!  Disgusting...but you do what you gotta do.  Nobody at the wedding, not one person noticed what the heck had happened or that I had totally cut myself on my ring finger and was then wearing one of our little pink Hugs and Kisses from the New Mr & Mrs band-aids that I had gifted our wedding party.  Guess they came in handy after all :)

The part in the video where you see my back turned to the guests and I'm talking to my sister?  Well, I held my hand out to show her the bloody mess on my knuckles.  She must have been out of it, too because she looked at my hand and said "Yeah, pretty."  Like she thought I was trying to show her the ring!  Then I glanced at my knuckle in an effort to tell her to look again and she saw the blood and her eyes got all wide with this "What am I supposed to do look?"  So silly.

Here's a couple pics of when I put Mr Fix It's ring on him:

But now, thanks to the little fiasco of me not being able to get my ring on, Mr Fix It makes a face wondering if we will have the same problem and *HIS* ring won't fit either!

And here's a shot of me with my best friend from high school immediately after our ceremony when I first came up for cocktails.  She was the only person the entire night who asked to look at my ring.  Very strange I thought but whatever. 

By the time I changed for our grand entrance, I was able to take the band aid off. But as you can see in this lovely photo from our first dance, I did have some minor cuts and scrapes :)

TODAY'S WEDDING TIP:  Stick to your plans!  Ladies, there's a reason why we come up with things when we say "Oh, I need to be sure to do this."  I knew that my ring was difficult to get on and off at that time.  I was having to use cold water and sometimes dish soap to slip it on comfortably every morning.  So I specifically said "I want to be sure to have a little bottle of hand soap or sanitizer gel or something that the pastor can hand me so that I can easily slip my ring on."  But at the time, in the moment, I let myself think it was no big deal and didn't want it to become a weird thing in the middle of our ceremony (though a lot of people would have probably laughed).  Had I let him hand me the soap, I wouldn't have ended up with a bloody knuckle!  I should have stuck to my plan knowing that it was the best thing for me regardless of what anyone thought.

All photos by Robert Mullins Photography
All raw video footage courtesy of Video Keepsakes of Beverly Hills