Wedding Blog

Mr. Tiramisu graced my left hand with an engagement ring almost exactly one year ago (we celebrated our one year engage-aversary last Thursday! and yes I’m pretty sure that is a word), and now it’s almost time to add another ring to the finger- and one to his as well.

We recently headed back to the place where Mr. T bought my ring- Zachary’s in Annapolis- where our favorite jeweler showed us our options for wedding bands. My ring is from the “Flyer Fit” collection by Martin Flyer, and that means there is a matching wedding band that is designed to fit snugly up against my engagement ring. I was excited to try it on and also glad that the decision was so easy. I love how the wedding band fits right up underneath the center stone. Here’s a picture from the Martin Flyer website of my engagement ring and wedding band together (mine isn’t a round stone though):

Unfortunately you can’t tell from that picture that the two fit snugly up against one another, but they do- the center prongs have a flat under-surface, if that makes any sense.

So with my ring taken care of, it was Mr. Tiramisu’s turn to look at wedding bands. He wanted something s-i-m-p-l-e. The boy could not be talked into any sort of detail whatsoever, and was even a little put-off by the “secret sapphire” that was hidden inside one of the bands he tried on. We started with platinum, but we also tried titanium, white gold, and palladium as alternatives. To be honest, I was the one who really wanted him to have a platinum band. He said it didn’t matter to him, but it just seemed unfair to me to try to skimp on his ring, while at the same time I was going to have two platinum and diamond rings. There are many arguments to be made for the other metals (besides the cost even), but for me it came down to the sentiment of wanting our rings to be made of the same material. So we picked out a simple six millimeter platinum band, headed home, and braced ourselves for the price quote phone call to come.

And holy crap, the price quote came. Turns out, since platinum is so expensive, and Mr. Tiramisu’s ring was going to have more of it than mine was, his ring was going to cost 50% MORE than mine. The total cost for the two was way over what we had budgeted.

Come on platinum. Why do you have to skyrocket during the ONE time in my life when I care what you cost?

That chart is seriously depressing.

So we did what any budget-conscious couple would do, and turned to the internet. We were sort of sad to do so, since we really loved the jeweler where we got my rings. But we just had to see what was out there. Turns out there is a lot.

After searching a lot of online wedding band websites, we liked www.iweddingband.com the best. The prices were among the best, but also important to us was the easy return policy. You can return any ring, even if it is engraved, within 30 days for your money back. There’s also no cost for engraving, finishing or for shipping.

You do have to watch out for “14K Platinum”, which is only 58% Platinum, when shopping for discounted platinum rings. The website we used sold both that and “PT950″ which is 95% platinum (that’s standard), but clearly differentiated between the two, which some websites did not.

We chose a 6 millimeter comfort fit platinum ring almost identical to the one Mr. Tiramisu had tried on:

The website offers three different finishes, and Mr. Tiramisu chose the “Satin” finish. We had the ring engraved with our initials and our wedding date- mine will have the same.

The ring arrived quickly, just as ordered, in a pretty little box and with a certificate of authenticity. I never thought I would purchase something so important (and expensive) from a website, but at almost half the cost of the jewelry store, even our jeweler said we should go for it. Mr. Tiramisu wore his ring around for a couple hours on the day it arrived (the sight of which pretty much made me squeal in delight), and was really happy with it. Mostly he was just glad that it was plain, fairly lightweight, and comfy.

I suppose it’s possible that our “platinum” ring isn’t what the fancy little certificate says it is, but we are trusting people and we’re happy with the ring. Have any of you ordered a ring - or a diamond- online sight unseen? Were you happy with it like we were? Any tales of caution?

Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5