Wedding rings – my latest obsession

As you may have gathered from my first post, I am a bit of a jewellery geek (read: obsessed). I have one of those fabulous anti-tarnish jewellery cabinet mirrors from QVC. It’s a wall-mounted shallow cabinet with a mirror on the front and I love filling it up with gorgeous, sparkly, pretty things. Anyways, I digress…

So, I have been thinking about wedding rings and to my surprise, so has V. He has never been much of a fan of jewellery, he doesn’t wear necklaces, doesn’t have an ear pierced, he doesn’t even wear a watch (although there are times when I wish he would!) I had always imagined he’d end up with a plain gold band wedding ring and that would be that. However, to my surprise he actually went online, did some research and actually found a couple of rings he really likes.

This gear ring is the first one he found, available from Kinekt Design.

Very cool I’m sure you’ll agree, but not entirely practical. The cogs turn and everything, you should check out the video on the Kinect website.

V is very into science fiction and the next ring he stumbled upon was space-related.

This ring is available from Jewelry Designs for Men. The downsides are that it is quite a fussy ring (for someone who lives in jeans and a T-shirt and never wears jewellery). It’s also quite pricey at $4,200… 😐

Then I stumbled upon another meteorite ring on Etsy by a US seller called Johan Rust (username: jewelrybyjohan):

I got geek points for finding this one as it is meteorite and titanium. It’s also fairly affordable and V seemed keen (for him) so he may well settle on this one…

For myself, well… I saw the most gorgeous white gold engraved ring on Brilliant Earth.

Downsides:

• It’s expensive.
• It comes from the USA (I live in the UK).
• I have no idea what US ring size I am.
• My engagement ring would probably look a bit odd with it to say the least…

I do, however, love it so I’ve contacted the company who did my engagement ring (they do custom orders too) to see if they’ll give me an idea of price. Hopefully they could shape the ring so it sits beneath my engagement ring, although having a shiny setting and a more matt setting will probably look really odd. And my engagement ring setting is quite rounded whereas the Brilliant Earth ring is much more square. And it’ll probably cost millions. I’m probably being ridiculous. I hadn’t imagined budgeting much for wedding rings at all and here I am looking at a custom engraved wedding ring.

I can feel myself heading into chocolate gateaux territory. Sigh.

The Proposal

Before I go off in a frisson of excitement about dresses, cakes and wedding venues I feel I should really fill you in on the details of the proposal.

The question I most frequently got asked when imparting the news of our engagement was: “Did you know it was on the cards?”

The answer? Yes and no…

Clues:

• My Mum and Dad came to visit end of January. Mum and I buggered off shopping for the day leaving the men to chat and eat lunch. A good time to ask my Dad if ever there was one…
• Vince was resolutely determined to go away for Valentine’s weekend despite the fact that he did his leg in and was on crutches (tore a calf muscle). Also the weather was snowy and a bit scary. I was nervous about driving but he was determined we’d get there no matter what. He is usually a little more sympathetic if I say I’m concerned about driving in the ice and snow…
• In the heat of the moment in an argument, V implied he’d been doing some planning for our future. It was the briefest of comments in the briefest of moments but it suddenly hit me that actually he might be contemplating it more than he’d let on…

Evidence to the contrary:

• Conversations we’d had in the run up to Valentine’s Day had basically gone something along the lines of:
  “So, erm, when do you imagine we might get married? Like, I dunno, erm, I don’t want a time or a date or anything, I just wondered if you’d given it any thought…”
  “We need to sort the kitchen out first, that’s going to cost a lot and we can’t even think about budgeting for a wedding until after that’s done.”
  In retrospect, what a ridiculous question for me to ask.

With him being so resolute about our need to do the kitchen first before we contemplated anything else in our lives I was fairly certain it wasn’t going to happen, although I couldn’t help but torment myself wondering about it…

So, we left for Down Hall Country House Hotel on the Sunday before Valentine’s Day. The hotel was gorgeous, we had a fabulous meal Sunday night at the hotel and we spent Monday wandering round Bishop’s Stortford. In the evening we had the most delicious battered haloumi and chips I’d ever tasted after which we returned to the (hooooj) hotel room to watch Puss In Boots (as you do). V had mentioned he would like to go for a walk at midnight to look at the stars (the Milky Way was supposed to be visible from earth) and despite the fact that we were both tired (and his leg was killing him after walking round Bishop’s Stortford) he still seemed keen so at just after midnight we took a snowy wander in the grounds. I was a little perturbed that he insisted he didn’t need his crutches but he’s never been one to listen to sensible advice so off we went.

Vince was disappointed that there was too much cloud cover to really see anything in the sky but we kept on walking until we reached some trees where we stopped for a cuddle. It was at this point (after the cuddle) he got down on one knee, got out the ring in its box and said “Will you do me the honour of spending the rest of your life with me as my wife?” The rest is a teary blur, but I do remember feeling like I had no air in my lungs for a moment and I managed to say “Oh my God! Yes!” After this he took off my glove and put the ring on my finger. It felt utterly bizarre as obviously I’ve never worn a ring on that finger in my life, and as engagement rings aren’t the flimsiest of things it felt huge and substantial on my finger. We hugged again, I was in a complete daze, and we took a (slow) walk back to our room where I could have a proper look at the ring…

The rest, as they say, is history.

I have a confession to make…

I have a confession to make. Before I got engaged I was completely dreading the idea of planning a wedding. I’d seen others go through it and I could only liken it to childbirth – a painful, stressful, necessary evil but you get something good at the end. My friends told me how tough it was to stay on budget and when I heard how much their weddings had cost them I felt a bit sick. Why would you want to spend sooo much on just one day? I had even considered at this point just running off to the registry office and getting married.

But… What I hadn’t anticipated at all was that I would get completely seduced by wedding planning. As soon as that ring was on my finger I suddenly realised that actually I could (wedding-wise at least) have anything I wanted. Roses and peonies? Sure. White Moroccan lanterns? Why not. Beautiful dress? Of course! I went out and bought wedding magazines for the first time, that was a thrill in itself. I started looking at Rock My Wedding and Offbeat Bride and drooling over the wedding photos. Uh-oh…

I had a conversion in the office with a male colleague not long after I got engaged about the cost of weddings. I gave the usual “Why would you spend so much on one day?” argument. His answer? “You only get to do this the once!” (Okay, in theory ;-))  And there was my answer.

Now, I am a bit obsessed. I am sure my fiancée is the one for me, I feel like we’ve been waiting a long time for this. I’ve seen wedding venues I would happily maim myself for and I get completely carried away.  And so I realised that, actually, this isn’t so much like childbirth after all. It’s like going to a lovely party that has delicious, calorific food on every table and you’re on a diet. I’m terrified willpower will abandon me I’m going to face mash the triple-choc raspberry-topped gateaux…

Oh. My. God.

Oh. Em. Gee. Ohmigod. Oh. My. God.

I said yes! Vince proposed on 14th of February 2012 and I said YES! More on the proposal later…

Okay, for you jewellery and gemstone geeks out there, I’m sure you’ll appreciate the vital statistics from the GIA Diamond Dossier.

Shape and cutting style: Marquise Brilliant
Colour: G
Clarity: VS1
Carat: 0.4
Polish and symmetry: Very Good
Setting is 18K white gold, 4 claw setting.

In summary, I am a Very Lucky Girl.