The Wedding Ring Saga

Let me tell you a tale, future grooms, that I hope will prepare you for the kinds of things that can happen when planning a wedding. This is a story about how trying to plan things from a long distance can jump up and bite you in the backside, and what it's almost always a good idea to give yourself a large time buffer for anything related to your wedding. Work in advance, plan far ahead, order things well before you need to, and in general every time you stop and think, "Eh, I can put this off. We've got a long time until the wedding!" then slap yourself in the face and don't ever think that again. The motto I've been espousing for months applies: everything changes.

A long time ago, nearly two years ago as I write this, I began the process of planning my proposal to Girl Scout Wife. As a part of that, I knew I was going to get her engagement ring from a jeweler near her hometown in Pennsylvania, mostly because she more or less told me, "Hey, you should get me a ring from this jeweler near my hometown." The Girl Scout Wife, sometimes, she makes it easy on me. So, over the course of several weeks I e-mailed back and forth with the nice folks at the goldsmith, who helped me get the ring I wanted, shipped it to me, and helped set me up for the proposal that would set us off on this whole wacky adventure called marriage.

Fast forward to a little over a year after the proposal, January of this year. The time has finally come to order Girl Scout Wife's wedding ring, and things couldn't be easier. You see, many of the engagement rings that this particular goldsmith makes have matching wedding bands, and I'd specifically ordered the one I had so that the matching ring would nestle up snug against the engagement ring. So, I contact the goldsmith, provide them with the information about the ring I'd purchased from them previously, and they set to work on crafting her wedding ring. In my mind, things were going great, and at least one aspect of the run-up to the wedding was being taken of largely by the efforts I'd put in over a year previous.

Pictured: A metaphor for my situation at this time.

Unfortunately, things did not stay happy for long. We got the shipping notification on the ring, and one day it arrived at my desk at work as a bit of a surprise. That evening, when I brought the ring home, Girl Scout Wife tried it on to make sure it fit...and it didn't sit snugly up against her engagement ring. In fact, it pushed the ring away, and just didn't look right at all up next to her engagement ring. More than that, she didn't really even like it; the style looked strange next to her ring, and even though it was similar there were aspects of the design that didn't match. Well, of course we weren't going to get married with a wedding ring she didn't like, so I contacted the goldsmith again and, through about a week's worth of back-and-forth e-mails, we discovered that the engagement ring that I'd been given was not the one I ordered (although this turned out to be a good thing, as Girl Scout Wife likes the one she got better than the one I actually ordered!) but they are similar. So, when I ordered the matching ring, I ordered the match for the one I thought we'd received, not her actual ring. Fortunately, the goldsmith was kind enough to allow us to return the ring and get another one.

This, of course, was not as easy as it sounded. For several weeks, the goldsmith sent us pictures of various rings, allowing us to (slowly, over the course of many many days) to "browse" their styles until Girl Scout Wife could settle on something she liked. I was happy to let her take her time making her pick, but near the end, when she'd narrowed it down to two styles, I was fairly certain she wasn't going to make any decision at all. Thankfully, the goldsmith was extremely patient, and in the end Girl Scout Wife settled on a design for a wedding ring that wasn't even close to the design of her engagement ring. It did, however, have some of the same coloration and a line of beading that, when put up next to the engagement ring, highlighted the detail of both rings. Once that was settled, the goldsmith crafted the ring, sent it out to us, and, thankfully, the new ring fit as well.

Different, but complementary. Just like my wife and I!

Now, let's contrast that with the process of getting my wedding ring. Over the course of the months of wedding planning, Girl Scout Wife and I both discovered that Etsy could be a source of some neat and unique items to give a little flair to our wedding and reception. Girl Scout Wife saw some mens' rings on the site, sold by TallieJewelry, sent me links, and I quickly found a style that I wanted. The ring I liked popped out at me from among the ones she'd referred me to, and I placed my order. The ring arrived perfectly sized, and I couldn't be more thrilled with it. The design is unique but tasteful, and I like the way it looks on my finger. Easy as can be.

One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

The takeaway here, as I mentioned above, is simple: don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today, because when it comes to planning a wedding, everything is going to change, and you'd better have plenty of time to deal with those changes when they come.