how we chose our wedding rings

Lady rings.

Do you know what's almost as fun as eating cake for breakfast and lunch? Diamonds! Our epic day of wedding vendor-ing continued with a jaunt to the Diamond District to meet with our wedding ring jeweler, David Levy.

Obviously I wasn't involved with the planning and purchasing of my engagement ring, but Mr. Levy is also the kind soul who helped Mike design that bling. Two of Mike's closest friends had also used him (with great success), so it was almost a no-brainer. Editor's notes: As I've learned over the last few years, while the stones at Tiffany, Cartier, etc are obviously lovely, they are no better (and sometimes worse) than what you might find at a smaller diamond vendor. And, um, they're also about 10 times as expensive. For any men about to get engaged that also are avid readers of this blog (hahaha): do yourself a favor and contact David.

First off: who here has been to the Diamond District before? It's kind of like an alternate universe. There are so many people who just stand around outside schmoozing. I swear half the business there probably gets done on the sidewalk while you're sharing a pretzel with a dude you've just met. Anyway, David's office is not one of the street level stores, but a smaller space inside one of the many, many office buildings that are stuffed with diamonds. Yum.

Man rings.

I guess the stuffing with diamonds necessitates a rather high level of security though: I've never seen so many security cameras, triple doors and deadbolts than I did on our trek upstairs. But once we actually got to David's studio, he was charming and friendly and let me play with lots of rings all at once.

While David popped my ring in the steam cleaner (first time I've had it professionally cleaned since October of 2011, whoops), Mike tried on wedding bands, OMFGGGG. He's deciding between white gold and platinum right now, so if anyone has any advice on either, do let him know. In the end he decided on a very simple plain band, but I think we'll probably get them engraved on the inside. What do people normally put? Their wedding date? Mike would probably like "RG3 4EVR."

Once my ring was sparkly again (highly recommend a good steam clean if you have never done it. But remember not to do it too frequently or you'll loosen your stones!), I played around with matching bands. It's interesting to note that David told us that a large number of brides are now wearing their wedding band on their left hand and swapping their engagement band for their right. I didn't really mind the way this looked, but I think I'm more of a fan of the stacked look on my left hand. Either way, I ended up going for a band that can either go under my engagement ring or looks pretty darn snazzy on its own. Pictures to come! Maybe! I might leave it a surprise.

We obviously didn't leave with the rings today since they get made from scratch, but I'm pretty excited to go back in a few months and see how they turn out. Even seeing Mike with a ring on his finger just for a few minutes made me all tingly inside. 

Aw.