Imagine saving enough money to buy the love of your life a beautiful diamond ring only to drop it off the Brooklyn Bridge just as she agrees to marry you.

A local groom-to-be experienced the horror for himself.

Don Walling planned the day with the precision of a classroom lesson. He would propose to his girlfriend, Gina Pellicani, on the Brooklyn Bridge’s pedestrian walkway. His family would be looking on and his sister-in-law would videotape the whole thing.

But at the moment of truth – with ring in hand – disaster struck, and it wasn’t because Gina refused to say, “I do.” Walling dropped the ring through a crack in the pedestrian bridge and into traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge roadway below.

“I got on one knee, proposed and it just flew out,” Walling said. “I watched it fall through the crack on the bridge, right between the wood planks.”

But he didn’t let his shock sway him for long. Walling swung into action.

“I kissed her, said I was sorry and told her I am going to get that ring back,” Walling said.

The groom-to-be jumped onto the bridge's roadway and began looking for the ring. Miraculously, he found it, with the help of his family and fiancée looking on from above.

Pellicani couldn’t wear the ring because the band bent in the fall, but the diamonds were intact -- not bad for falling onto traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.

The ring is being repaired and will be restored to its former luster, but Walling said the next time he gives it to his fiancée, it will be in the safety of his home.