A Bestman's Nightmare! Wedding Ring Disappears Just as The Priest Asks For it

Being best man is a job fraught with peril: is there anything worse than giving a bad toast, getting drunk, or doing both at the same time at your best friend’s wedding?

Well, it turns out there is: losing the wedding ring.

At St. John’s church in Surrey, south of London, during the wedding of Lewis Aubrey, 31, and Elizabeth Gray, 29, a ‘pling’ sound rang throughout the church, alarming everyone present.

“Was that the ring?” asked the priest, Nicholas Calver, who conducted the ceremony.

When the best man — the groom’s brother, Matt Aubrey — sheepishly confirmed that it was, the ceremony was paused while the wedding party tried vainly to find it. At one point, 20 people were reportedly crawling on the floor, lifting carpets, dissecting flower displays and even digging through the best man’s sporran, which is a fur pouch worn over a kilt.

The bride was in shock. “I was kind of just thinking, ‘Oh, God, the show’s got to go on. I want to get married,’” Gray said afterward.

It had taken Aubrey six months to search for just the right ring, and he wasn’t about to let it go lightly. One photo shows Aubrey covering his mouth moments after the ring was dropped; another shows Aubrey, in his kilt, kneeling on the floor to find the ring.

After several minutes of fruitless searching, Gray’s mother lent the couple her wedding ring and the ceremony continued.

“It kind of felt nice and it felt right to use my mum’s because it means something,” Gray told ABC News.

But the real hero of the day was Calver.  Armed with a shovel and a flashlight, the priest told The Telegraph, he spent two hours looking for the missing ring, finally discovering it in a crack between a step and the altar’s raised dais. Calver rushed to the reception and found the embarrassed best man. Poking Matt Aubrey in the rib, Calver said, “I think you owe me a drink.”

The best man entered into the reception holding the ring aloft like Frodo from The Lord of the Rings, Gray told ABC News. Then the real ring was placed on her finger and the priest blessed the marriage again. “So I kind of got married twice,” she said.