SUBSTITUTES FOR FORGOTTEN WEDDING RINGS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8452, 21 October 1905, Page 3

SUBSTITUTES FOR FORGOTTEN WEDDING RINGS.

"Don't forget the ring!"

This warning has been given many times to the nervous bridegroom on the morning of the great event of his life. One would hardly think it necessary to remind a man of so important an item of the ceremony. Yet, again and again, some poor, flustered fellow has found himself in the awful predicament of being minus the hoop of gold. No one who has not passed through the agonising ordeal can have an adequate notion of the suffering of the unfortunate man at the altar rails, with an expectant bride by his side, and no ring to wed her. Words fail to give any idea of those terrible few moments of his life. A man in the best of health is immediately reduced to a" flabby, inarticulate creature. And should the bride be hysterical it needs no stretch of imagination to picture the scene that follows. The ceremony is interrupted. Someone is appealed to for a makeshift ring. The weeping bride is led to a seat to wait the turn of events^ except in such instances as recently occurred, when the officiating clergyman or alderman rose to the emergency. At a New # Jersey church wedding, when, at the psychological moment, the bridegroom confessed in terror that he had forgotten the ring, the pastor promptly drew a bunoh of keys from his pocket, handed the largest of the bunch to the embarrassed young man, who looked stupidly at the large loop at its end. The bride, however, had her wits about her. She thrust the proper finger through tihe loop, wliereupon the bridegroom, prompted by the clergyman, said in a dazed fashion: " With this ring I thee wed." Another clergyman, at a wedding in one of New York's suburbs, supplied the suddenly discovered deficiency by removing his eyeglasses, slipping out one of the lenses, and offering the gold rinn to the bride. She had presence of mind enough to accept the strange substitute without question. The oddest instance of this kind doubtless occurred in Chicago at a wedding before an alderman, who insisted upon mixing the religious with the civil ceremony. When tibe ring was not forthcoming he calmly took a corkscrew from his pocket and assuired the bride it would be all right if she placed her finger in the loop of ite handle, which she did. But the aldarman insisted on having his corkscrew back at the ATl d the ceremony.