Ring mishap during wedding sends groom overboard

A groom went overboard in the Charleston Harbor in the middle of his wedding ceremony, but not because of cold feet.

“I dove overboard and that’s about it,” said Trent Smith about his Aug. 9 wedding. Smith and his new wife, Alena, planned an intimate, sunset ceremony aboard the sailboat “Alize.”

When it was time to have the ceremony, Smith recalls, they were standing on the bow of the sailboat with their friend who was performing the ceremony. Smith held his bride’s wedding band in a small pouch.

“So I had my finger up in there and I was trying to fish it out, and the wind just swept it off my finger, right up into the air,” he said.

Alena was stunned.

Her groom remembers that time simply froze. Smith said he looked at everyone and said, “I lost

the ring, it just went overboard.”

Capt. Bill Haynie of Charleston Sailing Trips thought they were joking. There had been talk of exchanging vows in the sailboat cockpit, in case something or someone went overboard. Now, the groom was asking for a net.

“I could see it in his face that he was serious, so by the time that I went to get the net, I heard him hit the water,” Haynie said.

Smith said he aimed for the pouch as he dove in.

“I could see the pouch floating and I’m thinking the ring’s probably still in the pouch, and that was the only option I could think of at the time,” Smith said. He swam over, managed to grab it and gave the pouch a squeeze.

“The ring was nowhere to be found, so we just made do,” Alena said.

The groom climbed out of the water, soaking wet, but with a dry shirt from the captain, the wedding went on, even though the wedding band was gone.

“Well it’s technically not lost,” Smith said. “We know where it is.”

Their friends tell them, there’s adventure ahead.

“And this is setting the stage for an interesting marriage with an interesting man,” Alena said. “It’s real life and it captures the ups and downs and the craziness of everything that marriage really is.”

“I wouldn’t have changed it looking back, because we’ll never forget it,” he said.

Haynie has the coordinates for the missing ring, although he says more than likely, it’s in plenty of mud just off the Charleston Battery.