What Do We Do With Our Wedding Rings While We Are Traveling?

Tanya and I don't have the most valuable wedding rings in the world. They're actually fairly modest by most people's standards. However, they are still worth more than some people in some parts of the world earn in a whole year. Realizing the disparity between the poverty of some places we intend to visit and the dollar value of the jewellery we wear since we got married, Tanya and I have had a series of discussions about our wedding rings and what we should do with them while slow traveling through Asia.

We could just wear them and take our chances. They are our wedding rings after all. Some people wear theirs 24 hours a day and never remove them for anything. However, if we wear them and they get stolen that would be very upsetting. It could also be really dangerous. It's unlikely a pick pocket could take our rings right off our hands so having them stolen would probably mean having them taken by an armed robber. Not a pleasant thought. Maybe we should just take that risk but losing our wedding rings would greatly increase the upset if we were robbed. Actually, wearing them may actually boost our chances of being robbed at all and neither of us have any desire to have a gun or knife waved at us.

The alternative is to leave them at home. We could entrust them to someone who has the ability to store them somewhere secure. Optionally, we could wear substitute rings that are both less valuable and less flashy for the duration of our trip.

After much discussion and careful consideration this is in fact what we have chosen to do. Our actual wedding rings have now been handed over to someone trustworthy and we will not be traveling with them. Shortly before leaving Thailand I happened to purchase a pair of plain silver rings that we have dubbed our “travel rings”. We'll be wearing these for the duration of our trip. They are very definitely not flashy and, at about $6 each, they can at least be cheaply replaced should they be taken or lost.

This does not mean that we will never wear our proper wedding rings again. When we have an at least semi-permanent home, we have a big reunion planned 🙂