Weddingbee Blog

There is an extremely complicated matter of our wedding rings. Honestly, it really shouldn’t be that hard. I’m not picky, Mr. Magnolia is not picky, and while I love the symbolism of the wedding band, I’m not entirely convinced that he’s actually going to wear one. He’s just not a jewelry kind of guy, which is no big deal. My dad hasn’t worn a wedding ring since he lost his (before I was born), and my parents have been happily married for 31 years.

My engagement ring is absolutely beautiful. It’s a solitaire, Asscher-cut diamond in a platinum, four-prong setting. When he ordered the ring, the jeweler told him not to “ruin” it with baguettes. It’s a phenomenal stone, and I get compliments all the time!

(photo courtesy of 35 Atlanta…please excuse Mr. Magnolia’s very short fingernails!)

Originally, I didn’t think much of the wedding band, because I just figured that I would get a simple platinum band (or even white gold, for that matter). But then my mom proposed a different option…

My grandmother passed away when I was six, and she left behind her engagement and wedding bands, and a cocktail ring. As my mom told the story, my grandmother intended for the wedding set to go to my cousin Lindsay, and for the cocktail ring to go to me. After her death, her husband packed everything away, including the rings. They’ve been in his safety deposit box for over 20 years.

My mom always described the ring to me as gaudy, and way too big. “It looks like a cruise ship!” she would exclaim, “Definitely not your style. You’ll be able to do something with it, though.”

Last December, Mr. Magnolia and I got engaged, and a few months later, my mom brought up the cocktail ring. It contains something ridiculous like 55 diamonds, which could easily be placed into an eternity band. All of a sudden, visions of a glorious, glitzy, bling-a-licious wedding band started dancing through my head. Sugarplums? Pshaw! I was all about the diamonds!

By June, my grandfather’s health had deteriorated significantly, and my aunt went to clean out his safety deposity box. She brought the cocktail ring to my mom’s house, and my mother promptly fell head over heels in love with a ring she hadn’t seen in 20 years.

(The ring is similar to this one, but with even more diamonds, if you can believe it…)

She decided that it’s no longer gaudy, but instead absolutely beautiful, and she plans to wear it for special occasions over the next several months, perhaps longer.

Wait, what?

What happened to the plan of incorporating my grandmother’s diamonds into a piece of jewelry that I will wear every day? A piece of jewelry that’s a symbol of my relationship with my soon-to-be husband? Well, my mom came up with a million reasons why I shouldn’t use it for that purpose. (Did I mention that my grandmother is my dad’s mother? I’m still not entirely sure why my mom has laid claim to the ring. Oh well.)

(Again, similar…but not exactly the same.)

So, here we are, four and a half months from the wedding, and Mr. Magnolia and I are ready to purchase our wedding bands. I hope that my mom and I can come to an agreement on this issue, because I absolutely love the idea of incorporating the diamonds from the cocktail ring into my wedding band — in honor of my grandparents’ long and happy marriage. My idea is that we take maybe half of them for an eternity band. The rest my mother can use to make into another cocktail ring, or maybe we can save them for my brother to use when he gets engaged. Either way, I don’t think of it as destroying a family heirloom, but rather updating a piece of our family history. That’s not a bad thing, right?