The Ring, the Proposal, and the Newlyweds
In the spirit of lovers week, I decided to post my Love Story. If "love story" is too Hallmarky for you...it's not quite a love story. Not like that anyway. This post is really all about the ring I love.
My husband and I had known each other about 5 months when we start looking at rings. I would fall in love with one and he would keep taking me window shopping to look at another. I guess he could tell when I was settling for something. You know how you can say, “Yeah its pretty” as if there is a 'but' coming, but there isn’t a 'but'. I wasn’t/am not a shopper; even when it came to rings. If the internet had been in existence, I probably would have bought my ring online. I didn’t say I wasn’t an ‘orderer’.
I had a ring that I wore on my ring finger sometimes. It belonged to my grandmother and I was happy to use that. Her ring was silver and I really liked it; however, if I could choose a ring I wanted it to be two-toned. That helped to narrow things down a bit once I said that out loud. We would start off asking, “Do you have any two-tone rings?” If they didn’t, we didn’t need to look - despite the salespersons persistence at what I might like.
You know how you can look back and see a trait that should have been a red flag? Not a terrible red flag in this case, but what I know now is that my husband will look at a thousand versions of something before he buys it. I would have bought my own wedding ring about 100 times; maybe the first one I saw. What girlfriend doesn’t want to go look at rings? ME!! Just go ahead and ask me to marry you because I have a wedding to plan. In fact I did start planning undercover before he ever proposed.
So on a Wednesday he calls me; I know it was Wednesday because it was choir practice night. He tells me that Kay Jewelers is having a diamond showing and this is the last day. He said he had been there at lunch time and he saw some rings I might like; ask for so & so. Kay Jewelers was waaaay on the other side of town. I had choir practice. He couldn’t meet me there. I didn’t want to go. So I drive huffing my way across town anyway to look at rings - again. I didn’t know WHY I needed to look at rings if the traveling diamond show was packing up and leaving town.
I make it over to the jewelry store. So & so was with a customer so I scanned the rings quickly for anything two-toned. My eyes locked in on a two-toned ring that already had the diamond in it. I waited for so & so to get done and asked to see “that one”. With my big hands, I never can fit a display ring. I held it up and said how pretty it was. So & so said to try it on. I said it wouldn’t fit as I proceeded to try anyway. IT FIT!! And I L-O-V-E-D it!! I was done looking.
So I get back to my car and paged my “boyfriend” from my bag phone, (some people reading are going to be lost on that sentence) and he called me back. I excitedly told him all about the ring. How it was perfect, the diamond was already in it and it fit. So he questions me about how much I really like it and then pretty much burst my excitement with, “Maybe we can find another one like it”. The traveling diamond show would be leaving town with my ring.
Imagine my excitement when we continued ring shopping. My “boyfriend” would ask, “Do you like this one better than the one you saw at Kay’s?” “Yeah its pretty…” (not at all convincing). I had better things to do than ring shop, like plan a wedding dammit.
So do you wonder how I came to “settle” on the ring in the photo? That is THE RING from Kay’s! The night I tried it on, the display ring that already had a diamond in it and happened to fit my big fingers, had already been purchased, sized and mounted for me. To say, “he got me” would be an understatement.
The proposal came three months later....
Here's the totally irrelevant thing...if my hands were in a contest, "Which hands belong to a 41 year old woman?", my hands would lose. They look like they belong to a sixty year old man. WT? So I zoomed in on my ring finger to take a picture and said, "My what hairy fingers you have." Ewww. While I contemplated shaving it for the blog photo, I decided to use a sparkly border instead. I'm not very talented at photoshop so a few hairs made the shot anyway. But my what a beautiful ring that is.
Here's the relevant thing... there's no wedding band - just the 'engagement' ring. To pair it with anything would have taken away from it. Besides that, I was SO done with ring shopping.
