D. Ellen White’s Position in Australia [1891-1900]:
Mrs. White’s son, Elder W. C. White, was a widower while serving with his mother in Australia. He fell in love with, and became engaged to, Ethel May Lacey. May was a British young woman, born in India, educated in Britain, and now [in 1895] living in Tasmania, Australia. (In all three of these countries the culture not only accepted but demanded wearing of the wedding band as a sign of marital fidelity.) May’s father was in the British police service, and he had now retired in Australia. WBEGWSDAC 7.5
Anticipating a problem, because she was British (and knowing of Ellen White’s objection to American missionaries in Australia wearing the wedding band), May went to her future mother-in-law (Mrs. White) to seek counsel. Shortly thereafter May wrote to her fiance, “Willie,” and reported the interview: “She [EGW] says she has no objection whatever to my wearing one.” WBEGWSDAC 7.6
The couple was married at the bride’s home in Tasmania. As there were no SDA ministers on that island at that time, the service was conducted by an Evangelical clergyman; a ring ceremony was performed. May subsequently wore her wedding band on the trip from Tasmania to Australia’s mainland; and for several weeks thereafter she continued to wear it. Then, a little later, May removed her wedding band. Noting that fact, her new husband inquired as to the reason. She replied simply that it had gotten in the way while she was doing the family washing. She never again wore this simple, plain band of gold, neither in Australia, nor on the journey from Australia to the United States, nor during her subsequent years in America. Her wearing of it, in Australia, in the 1890s, was in total harmony with the EGW counsel as published in the single statement in Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, 180-81. WBEGWSDAC 7.7