Widow searches for lost wedding ring when husband dies 3 days after getting married in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS (KVVU/Gray News) — A South Dakota woman is asking for help finding the wedding ring her husband lost in Las Vegas the night they married.

Tammy Bishop and Will Mulroy were married Oct. 20 at the Viva Las Vegas Chapel.

Bishop said they celebrated on a party bus and toured the Strip. At a bar, though, she says Mulroy looked down and realized his ring was gone.

“We got to a bar. He looked down and his band was gone. He lost it. He started crying,” Bishop said.

According to Bishop, he told her the ring was two sizes too big because he had lost weight.

She said the ring may have slid off on the bus or while he moved into his wheelchair. It may also have come off while he rolled down the Strip.

“We backtracked our steps. We told the bus driver. We had everyone looking. We couldn’t find it,” she said.

The next day, she joked with him: “You didn’t even have your ring on for 24 hours and you lost it.”

Everyone laughed, she said.

“I said it’s not a big deal; we will buy you a new one, but now that he is gone it is a big deal to me,” Bishop said.

Sadly, Bishop said Mulroy died just three days after their wedding.

She said he was in a lot of pain on the way home and mentioned going to the ER as soon as they returned to South Dakota.

The next morning, he was so congested that she told him not to go to work.

Bishop said she couldn’t wake him and called 911. She said doctors declared him brain dead at the hospital. He was on life support for 24 hours. His heart stopped three times in the ER.

“It just doesn’t make sense. When we started dating, that’s when the accident happened, then we got married, and it’s hard,” Bishop said.

Bishop and Mulroy met in July 2023 and began officially dating in March 2024.

However, a week later, Mulroy was in a motorcycle accident and became paralyzed.

“There was a lot of anger at first,” Bishop said.

Mulroy kept asking her to marry him. And this summer, she said yes.

On her Oct. 4 birthday, Bishop said he told her he had planned a Vegas wedding, everything was booked, and her friends were going.

“It was a perfect day,” Bishop said. “He was on cloud nine,” she said.

The groom’s party and bride’s party got ready separately. Mulroy first saw Bishop in her dress when she walked out to the party bus.

“It was pretty cool,” she said.

Bishop remembers Mulroy as a hands-on guy.

“He was very savvy, very mechanically inclined, could fix things, just that guy,” she said. “He didn’t have to call other guys to get stuff done.”

He worked at Fleet Farm and had worked with party buses in the past. The couple had decided to start their own party bus business.

Now, Bishop hopes a stranger finds the ring.

“It would mean a lot. The rings were blessed, and that was our wedding ring, and that was him and how much it meant to him. That’s why it means so much to me,” she said.