What Does It Mean When Your Engagement Ring Breaks Before the Wedding?

Exactly 45 days before our wedding my engagement ring broke. I took it in a few months ago to replace a small diamond, clean the ring, and bolster the prongs. The woman told me I was hard on my ring and that I should take it off when I’m gardening, working on the house, and sleeping… who does that? I’m too afraid to lose it, so I never take it off.

The other night my ring got caught on my shirt I was taking off. I looked down at my hand and saw the rose gold band was sticking straight up! This has been a crazy week where nothing was going right, so I didn’t panic. It was one of those laugh-at-how-absurd-this-situation is moments.

But, then I started wondering if it was a sign… A broken engagement ring must be a bad omen! Well I didn’t find anything about that omen. Most “broken engagement ring” search engine results are really answering, “Who the hell keeps the ring when the engagement is broken off?” There are a lot of analyses of what a dream about a broken engagement ring means, but this was real, f-ing life. Dreams like that seem to mean anxiety and stress around a wedding. Which I think every bride has. My stress is around our mid-remodel house and getting everything done, not the man I’m about to marry.

So the next night I took it back to Kay Jewelers and showed the man the ring thinking I would get a lecture for being too hard on it. He actually said this happens often with gold because it’s so soft. (Ah, high school science class is helpful in real life). The purer the gold, the more susceptible it is to bending and breaking. Gold is actually the most malleable and ductile of all metals.

He told me it would take two weeks to repair and that I would have it back on the 10th.

I replied, “Wait, the 10th of July or August?”

He snapped, “The 10th of July is in two weeks.”

“Well, my wedding is August 9th, so I just wanted to make sure!”

After my research and talking to the jeweler I came to the conclusion that shit happens. Especially before a wedding. A broken engagement ring means nothing other than 1) I work with my hands at home a lot and 2) gold is malleable.