Shopping for wedding rings

[Asimovian]

I'd enjoy hearing the stories of other Dopers about the process of shopping for wedding rings, since I'm involved in the process myself, these days.

Did you enjoy the process? Did you start out with an idea first, or with a budget? What was most important to you in a ring? If you're male, did you wear a ring during the engagement process? Did the two of you have matching rings? How much did your family and friends influence your decision-making?

Tell all!

[Oakminster]

I'm in the ring market, too. The Druidess and I are looking at

Blue Nile (http://www.bluenile.com/) while we talk about ring related stuff--the cut for the diamond, the setting, the metal, the quality of stone, and our budget for same.

There's a "build your ring" feature that lets you try out different options on a virtual ring.

Note: I have no commercial interest in Blue Nile, and don't care if anybody ever shops there. I have not bought anything from them yet, and may not. Mentioned just as a resource for information.

[TravisFromOR]

My boyfriend and I are about six months away from a civil union. Since we're both dudes, we don't need a big flashy diamond. We want something fairly inexpensive, and have decided on carbide--it's not traditional, and is fairly cheap.

This is what I'm voting for: http://www.titaniumstyle.com/Merchant5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=AJC&Product_Code=5-033&Attributes=Yes&Quantity=1

The SO wants something that's a bit smoother.

[Asimovian]

These are the two I've settled on, I think. It'll be one (http://www.jewelryvortex.com/fine-jewelry/rings/wedding-bands/tungsten/inlay/rfr15300.php) or the other (http://www.overstock.com/Jewelry-Watches/Tungsten-Carbide-Black-Inlay-Ring/5207518/product.html).

[chacoguy]

We got the cheapest ones they had; $110 for the pair, class act, all the way. :cool:

[TravisFromOR]

These are the two I've settled on, I think. It'll be one (http://www.jewelryvortex.com/fine-jewelry/rings/wedding-bands/tungsten/inlay/rfr15300.php) or the other (http://www.overstock.com/Jewelry-Watches/Tungsten-Carbide-Black-Inlay-Ring/5207518/product.html).

Now I want a wood one!

:smack:

You've complicated the process...

[Maggie the Ocelot]

I like the first.

Our wedding bands are just plain white gold. My engagement ring is a single sapphire inset into a similar white gold band. We picked them out together; it was important to us that there not be any diamonds involved.

Rather like this one, (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0043L8ITW/ref=nosim/furniturelivi-20) but with only the one stone.

[flatlined]

I knew what I wanted. My sweet baboo was happy that I would wear a ring, so when we went shopping, I showed him what I wanted and he paid for it.

Get something strong. I move boxes for a living and needed platnuim so my ring wouldn't bend. I know ladies with gold rings they can't wear because they flatened their ring so badly. Think about what you will be doing with your hands before buying.

My ring has what was called an "illusion" stone. Its 4 small stones set together. Nice flash and it was $600 3 years ago.

BTW. Don't go to Kay Jewellers. Their prices are good and they have lots of pretty stuff. My sweet baboo wanted me to have my ring for my December birthday and paid for it in November. All that was needed was resizing. It didn't arrive in time for my birthday. It didn't arrive in time for Christmas. It didn't arrive for Valentines Day. The excuses were that its hard to resize a platnium ring and they needed manager approval and the diamonds would pop out if it was resized.

When it finally did get fixed, the manager called us to tell us that we finally got our ring...then locked it in his desk and went home for the day.

[Lynn Bodoni]

I was in college, and hating the fact that I lived in Missouri. My boyfriend was in the Air Force, stationed in Spain. He took about a week's leave, flew to Missouri (properly pronounced as Misery), and proposed when I met him at the airport. There was a three day waiting period, and so we didn't have a lot of time for ring shopping, nor did he have a lot of money. So, after getting our blood tests (and he very nearly passed out), we went to various pawn shops, but it was nearly as cheap to get a new ring. So we got me a wedding ring, without an engagement ring. I'm still wearing it, nearly 34 years later. He's offered to buy me a belated engagement ring several times, but my mother and grandmother have given me more than enough jewelry, including rings with gemstones in them. I really don't wear that much jewelry, anyway. I usually wear the wedding band, a watch, and a necklace.

[aruvqan]

Both mrAru and I are mechanics - he was a navy auxilliaryman, and I was trained as an inside/outside mechanic and neither of us likes wearing rings. We borrowed a ring for the ceremony and sort of swapped it between us for the ring part, and gave it back after the ceremony. We had been joking about hitting all the gum machines in the area until we got a pair of rings =)

We do not miss nor regret the choice for no rings, it simply isn't important to us.

[Nava]

Both my parents and Middlebro had the plain gold bands with the names and wedding date engraved inside; shopping for them was just a matter of making sure they had the right size.


I've told before the story of "how Middlebro met SiL," or at least parts of it. It was during a week-long Easter celebration in our parish; she was from a bigger town 1h away. They were both in 12th grade; SiL, being a control freak (she's gotten mellower with age and maternity, hallellujah praise the Kidlets), had the next ten years of her life all planned out and no room in them for a boyfriend. Him, being a romantic, knew he wanted to marry her within half an hour of meeting her... but he also knew that if he came in too strongly, she'd run away as fast as her long legs could carry her - which was quite fast, she was in the track team.
For the next few months, he and his BFF would go to her city as often as they could and "somehow" manage to run into her and her friends; her friends were calling him "your boyfriend" by the second trip, she kept denying he was such a thing. After about 10 weeks of this, she accepted that ok, well, maybe he was her boyfriend.
Him and his BFF obtained ring "samples" from their mothers and sisters; one day while they were at the swimming pool (and therefore she'd taken her rings off), her BFF got into SiL's bag and compared the ring SiL usually wore on her ring finger with the samples.
Bro used the proper sample to pick a pair of plain silver bands and gave her one on their "four month anniversary". On their wedding, they traded them for the golden ones.

[irishgirl]

I have a small round cut diamond in a full bevel yellow gold setting, with a tiny diamond on each shoulder, on a platinum band, with a plain platinum wedding band. Irishfella has a plain platinum band. The diamonds are Canadian, and small but very good quality stones. The settings and materials mean that my ring is very sturdy, so no flattening, bending or chance of losing a stone.

I got bored looking at samey solitaires, and went hunting for something different, seeing it finally in the window of an artisan jeweller in Dublin. So, I got to meet the man who made it, and he later made our wedding bands to measure for us too. I took irishfella along and he approved the ring and the price!

I have never seen anyone with an engagement ring like mine, and I get compliments on it still (especially from jewellers- they always ask where I got it).

Irishfella gave me a budget for the rings he was buying, and I bought his wedding band with prize money from a medical school prize I won about 6 monhs before the wedding.

[Hello Again]

We looked online, found Titanium rings we liked for about $100 each*, (in similar, but not matching designs) and bought them.

My friends and family had 0% input in our decision.

I wear an engagement ring. I had it custom designed. Yes that means it wasn't a surprise. gasp!. I actually had a bit of an anxiety dream before the wedding where my husband surprised me with a ring -- that was very, very ugly. It had cavorting dolphins and a diamond (not my thing) that was huge and cheap looking. LOL.

*"They're cheap and durable, like our love."

[KarlGrenze]

SO wanted/wants to make it "official", so last time I visited him, while we were at the mall, he took me to a jewelery store he had already seen. He asked to see the "alianzas", and when the choices appeared, both of us went straight for the same design, only I first looked at the white gold version. I got convinced to use the simple gold design, and we both got fitted. These are rings that could double as wedding bands, and worn on the right during the engagement.

We liked it and ask for price, but didn't have money then to get them. Still, it was nice that we both agreed on a choice, and, shall the money appear, buy them for us. Due to long distance, HE will wear the ring for longer than I will wear mine, but he's OK with it. He, after all, is the one that wants it the most (the ring).

Although in my case it will likely double as wedding band, he says he doesn't want that. Reason? He wants a big honking thick wedding band, and our design comes as a relatively thin style.

Also, after looking and choosing a style, he admitted that he had previously gone to other stores and looked at other designs, but that the style he originally wanted was out of his budget.

Oh, and it's a simple yellow gold ring with a "striped"? design.

[Sattua]

I knew that I wanted the engagement ring to be simple and straightforward... a single diamond on a narrow gold band. We went into a jewelry story one day (when we'd known each other about six weeks!!!) and I found out that I liked princess cut better than round. Then my husband took it into his own hands... he found a lot of jeweler's websites that had specific individual diamonds listed, with high-resolution photos so you can examine the flaws, etc. He picked out the stone and decided to have the inside of the ring inscribed too ("There will be time"). One evening when I wasn't expecting it, as we were cuddling on my back deck, he recited all of Prufrock up to the line "drop a question on your plate", then said, "so let me drop a question on your plate..." and took it out. *sniffle*

For the actual WEDDING rings, I took over. We both wanted plain narrow gold bands. I bought them on eBay.

[Sigmagirl]

I wanted a plain yellow gold band, but he wanted a white gold band, because he says his father is his example of a good husband and his father wears a white gold band. No, I says, your father wears a yellow gold band. White! he says. Of course I was right. I always notice jewelry. So we both got yellow gold bands. Like Hello Again, we designed our engagement ring together. Every jewelry store we sent to said they did custom work, and every one took a catalog with stock settings out from under the counter. Finally we found one that actually did custom work.

[pbbth]

These are the two I've settled on, I think. It'll be one (http://www.jewelryvortex.com/fine-jewelry/rings/wedding-bands/tungsten/inlay/rfr15300.php) or the other (http://www.overstock.com/Jewelry-Watches/Tungsten-Carbide-Black-Inlay-Ring/5207518/product.html).

That second one is very similar looking to the one my husband picked for himself. For myself I just took off my engagement ring that morning and gave it to my husband to put back on my finger at the wedding, so now it is my wedding/engagement ring. He wanted something a little different but couldn't figure out exactly what until we were browsing on overstock.com and came across a titanium ring made out of old helicopter parts. It was listed as bulletproof. His eyes lit up like Christmas and he said, "I want that one!"

[Antigen]

His was easy, he wanted the simplest thing possible and went with a white gold band. No embellishments at all, just a "comfort fit" shape.

Mine was a little bit harder to settle on, because the engagement ring was his mother's and several decades old, making it hard to find a band that was a good match for it. The original band, which was offered to us, was extremely thin and I didn't like the feel of it. I also wanted a wedding band I'd be happy to wear alone, without the engagement ring beside it. The engagement ring is a single stone set very high, in a white gold setting with a knife-edge look. Most of the rings I tried on would rub against the diamond setting and fit uncomfortably. After trying on dozens of bands at different places, I settled on a small delicate band with seven tiny diamonds and a milgrain edge.

We did have a budget, and that definitely influenced my decision. I could have gone for something fancier or more intricate, but we couldn't really afford it. I'm happy with what I have, though. We were never concerned with finding a matching set - we have very different taste and since we're going to be wearing these every day we each wanted to find something we'd enjoy wearing.

These are our rings (http://www5.snapfish.com/snapfish/slideshow/AlbumID=6112914014/PictureID=326407467014/a=134259243_134259243/otsc=SHR/otsi=SPIClink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/).

Love that first ring with the wooden-inlay look, very different! But would you get sick of that in 15 years? See, that's the hard part... you're going to have it on your finger for quite a while! Good luck with your shopping and congratulations again on the engagement!

[Scuba_Ben]

My lady and I did some browsing to find our sense of style. She wanted a traditional precious-metal ring, I wanted the rings to match.

We went to several stores and tried on quite a few. Eventually we tried on a set of yellow gold rings, mill grain edges. We both went "OOOOoooooh!"

The rings arrived last week, and we've made sure they fit right. :D (Taking the rings off was difficult, and I don't mean due to sizing!)

W minus 3 months 12 days.

[Asimovian]

Love that first ring with the wooden-inlay look, very different! But would you get sick of that in 15 years? See, that's the hard part... you're going to have it on your finger for quite a while! Good luck with your shopping and congratulations again on the engagement!I've been married once before and had a plain white gold comfort fit band that I wore for nearly 11 years. I paid very little attention to my ring from an aesthetics standpoint, honestly. I enjoyed the symbolism. I don't think I'd get tired of it.

Besides, I've already told jsgoddess that any time we ever break or lose a ring, we'll have to replace it AND renew our vows -- I suppose we can add "or get tired of the look of a current ring" to that list. :D

[NinetyWt]

Your links don't work for me. :(

Hubby and I wanted very simple. He chose a plain white gold band. We went looking at rings at a local department store, where we found mine. It's an oval blue sapphire (http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i84/NinetyWt/SmallRing.jpg) (his birthstone) in a low setting with diamond chips on the band. It's almost masculine looking, has a wide band and is quite sturdy. (It's sparklier than the picture lets on - trick of the light, I think. It's hard to take photos of jewelry and have it come out right.)

I didn't want a Tiffany setting because I had one in my previous marriage and I was constantly snagging the thing on stuff. And actually scratched my son's face one time with it. :(

[markdash]

The Dashette and I had discussed marriage for a while, so she started shopping for rings on a second-hand website (Ruby Lane, if memory serves). We had also discussed budget and decided that as long as she liked how rings looked, cost was unimportant. We especially felt that spending 2 or 3 months salary on a ring is completely unnecessary and wasteful. She eventually found a set (interlocking engagement/wedding bands) she liked and made sure I knew about it. So I then went and purchased the rings without her knowledge, then popped the question after I received them.

My ring was purchased at the mall, since I only wanted a fairly plain white gold band. It kind of looks like this. (http://www.overstock.com/Jewelry-Watches/14k-White-Gold-Mens-Hammered-Design-Comfort-Fit-Wedding-Band-6.5-mm/5085961/product.html?rcmndsrc=2)

[silenus]

Our rings were custom designed for each other. The wearer got little input, as we wanted the rings to show what each of us felt the other would like. Came off rather well, actually. The wife's engagement ring is a white gold Celtic-design solitare, with a white gold wedding ring engraved in Old french. My band is a white gold signet-type with our wedding date in Roman numerals carved around the rim.

[mnemosyne]

He chose the engagement ring himself, without any input from me. Although I'd shown him a few rings that I liked here and there, they were all different and it wasn't something we'd talked about in detail. It's a solitaire Canadian diamond, and I have no clue what he paid for it. For me, it's the ring itself that's more special; it's a modern style, but he was inspired by the ring I wear on my other hand, an Edwardian ring that had belonged to my great-grandmother, with lots of filigree. I'm happy with it, because I love the look, but also because of the thought he put into it.

The wedding band was a bit more difficult; this engagement ring didn't come with a matching band at all. After looking around at other rings and getting close-but-not-quite-acceptable pairings, we finally just got the goldsmith at the store where we got the engagement one to custom make it for me. He made a slightly smaller version of the filigree, sans gemstone. It's a gorgeous pairing.

His ring doesn't look anything like mine. Mine are white gold, and he wanted colour; his actually has white, yellow and pink gold on it. His ring has some scrollwork, which resembles the filigree on my rings.

It was more important to us to have rings we liked, than to have anything that matched. We are still ourselves, after all; no need to be the same!

[akira5822]

I got incredibly lucky, when i discussed my intentions with Akirababe's parents her mother insisted i give my bride to be her engagement ring. A gorgeous platinum and diamond ring.

[GilaB]

Our rings don't match, and we don't care. It's not like anybody's holding them up next to each other to see that they coordinate.

I would strongly recommend getting a comfort fit band. It's rounded on the inside, rather than there being a sharp angle between the part against your finger and the outside of the ring. My mother recently replaced her wedding ring with a comfort band, after 30+ years of marriage, because the nearly right angle always bothered her; she's much happier with the new one.

[Dread Pirate Jimbo]

We had been dating for about 3 months when I won a $500 diamond at a fancy party we were attending with the company I was working for at the time. Since she knew I had a diamond, I was pretty much committed to marrying her at that point.

When the time came to officially pop the question, I went to the jeweller who was hanging on to my diamond and borrowed a cheap ring with a cubic zirconia in it to do the proposing (with them holding my diamond as collateral, of course). After she said yes, we went back to the jeweller's store, returned their "loaner" and sat down with one of their reps and custom designed the actual engagement ring, with the rep sketching our thoughts until we had something we liked. It's a fairly simple 24-carat gold ring, with the single diamond in a half-bezel setting and triangles of white gold inlaid alongside the setting. The ring has a squared-off "saddle" shape so it doesn't spin on her finger. The current plan is to decorate the white gold areas with diamond chips or something for our 10th anniversary, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

The wedding bands themselves are just plain 24-carat gold bands. Mine is extremely basic -- looks more or less like The One Ring (although I assume there are no Elvish runes visible on it if you stick it in a fire) and hers has the same saddle shape as her engaement ring so they fit together properly -- it also has a little notch that fits into a little bump on the engagement ring so they stay better locked together.

Since there was very little in the way of elaborate design - and the diamond was already paid for -- we didn't worry about cost for the rings and just decided to do them up right, since they'd be on our hands for a good long time.

[Mama Zappa]

These are the two I've settled on, I think. It'll be one (http://www.jewelryvortex.com/fine-jewelry/rings/wedding-bands/tungsten/inlay/rfr15300.php) or the other (http://www.overstock.com/Jewelry-Watches/Tungsten-Carbide-Black-Inlay-Ring/5207518/product.html).
They're both attractive, but how will the wood inlay hold up to years of wear, handwashing, exposure to heaven knows what chemicals etc.?

[Asimovian]

They're both attractive, but how will the wood inlay hold up to years of wear, handwashing, exposure to heaven knows what chemicals etc.?It's a valid question. We're both wondering whether the wood is exposed, or if it's coated somehow. I have no idea.

I'm more attracted to the Tungsten Carbide right now, anyway, but we shall see. :)

[Meagan]

My fiance and I had been together for 3 years, and were basically waiting on the timing to be right. I decided the time was about right, so i found a set (http://www.helzberg.com/product/%3Ci%3Eemma%3C-i%3E%2C+5-8ct+tw+diamond+engagement+ring+set+1652072.do?sortby=ourPicks) that I loved and set it to his homepage on his computer :D Not too much longer he proposed! The only difference between the rings he bought me and the one shown is my main diamond is round, and it came from a hometown jeweler instead of helzberg. I love it!

[mckall]

It's a valid question. We're both wondering whether the wood is exposed, or if it's coated somehow. I have no idea.

I'm more attracted to the Tungsten Carbide right now, anyway, but we shall see. :)

I have a Tungsten Cobalt ring, which looks similar to this. (http://www.debebians.com/betufowisece.html) I love it because it's pretty lightweight, but I know it's there.

It was about $250 at the jewelry place, which is where I bought both her wedding and engagement rings, so I got a decent deal on it.

We both talked about what we wanted and didn't, but she only gave me two guidelines: that it was a princess cut and a bevel setting.

I really wanted the actual ring to be a surprise, so that was more of a guideline; but it worked out fine in the end and she dug my choice.

[awldune]

The wife's engagement ring is an heirloom in platinum with some nice filigree, so we wanted a vintage band to accompany that.

Ordered one online from www.marleneharriscol.com, and was very pleased with their service (and the price!) and the ring arrived as advertised.

For my band we went to a local independent jeweler and picked a plain palladium band. Palladium was advertised as cheaper than platinum but more durable than white gold. No complaints.

The same shop resized my wife's vintage band.

[kenobi 65]

We had ours custom-made.

When my wife and I were dating, we spent our summer weekends working at a renaissance faire (friends of ours owned a blacksmith shop there). We had gotten to know a number of the other craftsmen, one of whom was a very skilled goldsmith.

My then-girlfriend selected a ring in said goldsmith's stock which she wanted as an engagement ring. It was a gold diamond ring, though it wasn't actually designed to be an engagement ring per se. It has an unusual shape -- the ring in this picture (http://vintage-wedding-rings.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/marquise-diamond-engagement-ring.jpg) doesn't really look much like it, but it gives you the idea that it has "points" that stick out above and below the main diamond (up and down the wearer's finger); on her ring, each of those points features a smaller diamond. The sides of the ring have curlicue-type scrollwork. It's a beautiful ring, and it's also one-of-a-kind -- he never made another copy of that ring.

In order to make a wedding band to match that, the goldsmith created a sort of v-shaped ring that tucked into the shape of the engagement ring, with scrollwork to match what was on the original ring, and a notch to fit the setting for the "lower" of the smaller diamonds. (My wife eventually had the two rings fused, as they were starting to wear from rubbing together.)

I worked with the same goldsmith on my own wedding band, which I designed myself, with his input. As I have that ring on hand at the moment, I can share a picture (http://www.flickr.com/photos/30352932@N03/5510655840/). There's a braid of white gold set into the middle of the ring, as I wanted something that wasn't too plain-looking. (Nerd alert: I chose white gold, in part, due to a series of fantasy novels, "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant", in which the protagonist's white-gold wedding ring becomes a magical totem.)

Several of my wife's friends provided her with some opinions as she looked at candidates for her engagement ring (I was told to "butt out" :) ). As we were designing the wedding rings, it was entirely up to us, working with the goldsmith on designs.

[Gleena]

We got ours for our fifth anniversary, because we paid for my immigration expenses instead of wedding rings at the time.

Ours are plain rose gold bands.

Engraved in Tokenien dwarvish.

We love them. I tell people it's Icelandic if I don't want to explain. Or I tell them the truth and watch them back away slowly. It fits our personality perfectly, though. And I like having a ring with something my husband said on it that nobody else can read. It makes me happy every time I see it.