Every good wedding has to have a little crisis.
For Calivé and Shannon Jackson, everything was going according to plan when they exchanged vows on the sands of Playa del Carmen on December 14, 2023. The couple had decided to elope and take a plane from their home in Trinidad and Tobago to the beaches. from Mexico for a celebration all to themselves.
“We love to travel and fall in love in different places,” Calivé Jackson told CNN. “We love all the things that anyone with the right amount of joie de vivre loves: creating memories and collecting as many experiences as possible.”
They were about to pick up another one.
By now, the Jacksons were well aware that even intimate weddings have dozens of small details to take into account. They had planned the event for a year and were sure they had everything under control.
But what they couldn’t plan for was the enormity of the day, the emotions that come with letting go of planning for doing, to finally, finally, fully focus on their love.
“Shannon and I were incredibly nervous,” Jackson said. “We were suddenly in the moment, surprised that we were actually there and about to get married. So naturally everything was a blur.”
Oh, and there were tears. (Every good wedding needs some of that, too.) When they said their vows, the new Jacksons were, in Calivé’s words, “a tearful mess.”
“It was quite embarrassing how we cried so much,” she said.
The officiant then asked for their wedding rings to seal the deal.
The Rings? The Rings!! Shannon patted their pockets, one after another, then again. No rings. The search became a little more frantic.
“Help help!” called his photographer Ezequiel Marcellini. “We’ve lost the rings!”
“Everything stopped suddenly, everyone started looking; us, our wedding planner, our officiant,” Jackson said. “Someone ran to our room and still didn’t find them, we looked in our photographer’s backpack and couldn’t find them either.”
Meanwhile, life around the wedding whirlwind continued. Tourists wandered around the beach enjoying the day. Some had stopped to watch the nuptials from afar.
Then, an Argentine couple saw that something had gone wrong and approached the distraught couple.
“They came and were so excited for us, crying almost as hard as we were,” Jackson said.
Once they realized what was wrong, the Argentine couple offered their own wedding rings without a second thought. Ending the ceremony with a borrowed pair of 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 returned to their places, said what needed to be said, and slipped the rings into each other’s hands.
“We didn’t think they would fit,” Jackson said. “But they fit together so perfectly that it seemed like some kind of magic.”
Of course, there was more crying after that. The two couples exchanged “thank yous” and “congratulations” and posed for some photographs that will undoubtedly have a special place in the Jacksons’ wedding album.
When the excitement subsided and the Argentine couple continued on their way (with their rings back), Calivé Jackson realized he didn’t even know their names.
However, she honored them with an X post 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 more than grateful. “Our wedding day was already special because we were there to celebrate our love, our happiness, the home we built together and we thought we were there alone,” Jackson told CNN.
“But it turns out we weren’t. People celebrate wherever love is and we were able to share our moment with so many people who were so happy for us. “We can never thank those two enough for that.”
Oh, and the Jacksons ended up finding their rings. They were kept in a bag in the bottom corner of an equipment bag, all the time at the wedding.