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 (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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 that I loved and set it to his homepage on his computer 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!
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.
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 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. 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.
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.
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!
). As we were designing the wedding rings, it was entirely up to us, working with the goldsmith on designs.
