Hellooo world! I am still here and seriously ready to get back to blogging! Last night, I realized that it’s been nearly a year since we bought my engagement ring. So, I thought I’d share the story of how we found it.
I know that people have mixed opinions on whether or not the girl should help her future fiance pick her engagement ring. However, as I rarely wear jewelry and I’m very picky about what I do wear, it was important to me to pick my own ring. Luckily, E was very understanding. (And I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that he was terrified of choosing something I hated ;P)
In summer 2016, we decided that we’d (hopefully) find and buy my engagement ring over winter break. I was looking forward to it for allll of my fall trimester as I worked on my senior thesis! It was doubly hard as we decided to keep our pending engagement a complete secret from all of our friends and family. I was bursting to tell someone! Finally, we were back at my mom’s house at the end of November and after Thanksgiving festivities had ended, we headed out to the shops.
The first place we went was Zales at the mall one town over from my hometown. We told the salesman that we were just browsing, as I imagined that it’d take me a while to find something that I liked. I thought I knew what I wanted: a two- or three-center stone ring that lay very flat on my finger. So I pored over that case for a while, but didn’t see anything that I liked.
Luckily, the salesman dropped in to tell us that we should at least glance at the pre-owned ring case in the corner of the store. Those rings were refurbished after having been sold back to the store and looked like new, but were heavily discounted. Admittedly, most of the pre-owned rings looked like 80s costume jewelry. There wasn’t a huge selection of rings that I’d remotely consider. But nestled amongst the gaudy, oversized pieces was my engagement ring.
It wasn’t at all what I thought I wanted: a tiny halo ring with an Eiffel tower setting, that was originally wayyy too big for me. But I instantly knew that it was the ring when I saw it. I immediately asked to try it on and fell even more in love with it.
However, E didn’t actually believe that it was the ring to start out with! So, I tried on a couple of similar ones and also some three-center stone rings to see if I’d just liked the sparkle on my finger. Nope, I was set on the very first ring I’d tried on. We thanked the salesman and left to sleep on the decision. I seriously hoped that it wouldn’t be gone when we came back the next day.
The next morning we stopped by Kay on our way back to Zales, but again, I didn’t find anything that I liked as much as the first ring. So the decision was made! We went back to Zales, bought the ring and matching wedding band, and sent them off to be resized. They arrived back at EP Center a few weeks later, and remained hidden in E’s sock drawer until he proposed in May.
So, what I thought would be a weeks-long saga of visiting a dozen jewelry stores turned out to only take 24 hours! Such is wedding planning: what you think will take forever turns out to be easy, and what looks like a small decision turns out to be a dozen separate time-consuming ones.
But tell me, what wedding topic would you like to hear about next? I’d like to write about how I asked my bridesmaids and what we’re doing for our wedding registry. Next month I’ll be able to share some of our engagement photos and how I found found my wedding dress. Let me know what you’d like to hear about!
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