Weddingbee

A few weeks ago I had a wedding nightmare that involved Mr. Sundae making a big mistake. We were up at the altar, and our officiant said, “May I have the rings?” Mr. Sundae responded, “Oh, we needed those today?” and proceeded to explain that he thought the rings were something we wore after the wedding, so he left them in a safe deposit box in Chicago. It was one of the more mild wedding-mares I’ve had, but disturbing nonetheless. So while we were on our way to pick out our wedding rings this weekend I made sure to explain that the rings needed to be at the wedding, seeing as how they were a vital part of the ceremony. He thinks I am crazy.

My engagement ring was custom made at Shelle Jewelers, and we love it so much there was no question we would head right back there for our wedding rings. They have craftsmen (is that what you call them?) on site who make the custom jewelry right there in the store. It’s actually quite fascinating - we got to go back and see what platinum looks like in raw form and how they make it into rings. Despite what I imagined about picking out our rings, it was actually really painless. I knew exactly what I wanted because my engagement ring was designed to have a matching band sit right next to it:

That’s a bad picture, but you can get the idea. The band will look just like the band portion of the engagement ring, with millgrain around both edges. The idea is that I’ll eventually get another band to wear so that there will be one on each side of the engagement ring. We were hoping to find a ring for Mr. Sundae that also had some millgrain around it, so they would look a little like a matching set. He browsed through the rings for all of 5 minutes before declaring he found the one he wanted. It’s not exact but it looks a lot like this one from bluenile:

Next was the debate about what metal to have his ring made out of. With the cost of platinum through the roof, that was almost immediately eliminated from the running. Our jeweler seems to think that prices might go up a little more this summer, seeing as how it’s “wedding season” and a lot of people will be buying rings (not sure I totally agree with that reasoning, but I thought I would share anyway).

The first metal we discussed was white gold but Mr. Sundae didn’t like the idea of having it re-plated every so often. Our jeweler suggested palladium, which I had never heard of, but we decided was a good alternative for us. It’s in the platinum family but is less expensive. Here is a description, according to DiamondVues.com:

Palladium is a natural white pure precious metal of 95% purity. It enhances the beauty of diamonds (similar to platinum), is hypo-allergenic, nickel free and needs no rhodium plating (which makes it slightly more desirable than white gold, albeit more expensive as well).

Palladium is 30 times more rare than gold, while sharing a similar patina and luster as precious platinum. Palladium is also a very strong and durable metal and will last a lifetime. It is less expensive than platinum, but more expensive than gold.

So, that’s that! Wedding rings are ordered. Are you or your fiance having rings made in different metals?

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