Weddingbee Blog

This is the post you’ve been waiting for. Not only do you get the proposal story, but the ring pix too! (Go ahead, scroll down and look… I’ll wait.)

Back? OK. Where were we?

Oh yes. Mr. Mary Jane knew what kind of ring I liked. He had a specific jeweler he wanted to work with and they were able to give him exactly what he wanted. They found a gorgeous center stone and the perfect setting to match. But was I allowed to have it right away? Oh no.

Since I played a major part in picking out the ring, I pretty much knew it was coming. Mr. MJ and I talked about what we’d do with the ring when it was ready. We realized that it wouldn’t be a very romantic story if we went down to the store, bought it together and walked out with that pretty thing on my hand. Though we’d made the marriage decision together, he wanted to do the proposal alone. This drove me NUTS, but I agreed to it. (I don’t think I had a choice.) Part of me really DID want a romantic surprise proposal. Nothing fancy, but romantic just the same.

At this point, I feel I must also stress how hard it was for me to keep all of these happenings a secret from family and friends.

We chose to remain hush-hush about our ring-shopping because we didn’t want to ruin the surprise for everyone. We wanted the impact of the engagement to be as exciting as possible. My mom and I email back and forth almost daily, so it was very difficult for me to leave this out of the conversations. This time of waiting was very hard for me to handle, in general. But that’s a story for another post.

Unfortunately, I did find out when it came in, and that drove me even more nuts. I may or may not have gotten a wee bit too pushy. (Okay - I was bad, but I couldn’t help it! I wanted to be engaaaaaaaged!) Thankfully, he did not make me wait too long. Barely two days after it came in, he proposed!

I was studying on Saturday afternoon when Mr. MJ went in to our bedroom. We have a bathroom off of our bedroom, so I didn’t think much of it. When he came out, he was standing off to the side of me. I could see him out of the corner of my eye (he was sort of hovering). I didn’t look at him, and in fact I think I said, “What do you want?” a couple of times. (Aren’t I sweet?)

Then he got down on his knee next to my chair. I saw that he was all dressed up with a tie on, and I knew this was it. He said all kinds of sweet lovelies about me and us. I can’t remember most of it because I was too busy rocking my ugly-cry face. In the end, I said yes, of course! I’m so excited that I get to be his wife. And aside from the best-ever husband-to-be… lookie what else I got! (Warning: I got a little shutter-happy - can you blame me?!)

My ring is by Levy Creations. The design was customized to include more side stones and to have a euro shank (squared-off bottom). The euro-shank helps keep the setting from spinning on my finger. We went with white gold instead of platinum because while white gold does tend to wear away, it can be rhodium dipped to brighten the old gold, and its imperfections can be polished out. I tend to be rough on my jewelry, and though platinum won’t wear away it does dent and scratch. I’ve also heard that it greys over time. I mentioned before that I did not want an oddly shaped wedding ring to wrap around the stone; my ring has a notch underneath the setting on one side to allow for the band to fit flush against it (you can see the notch in the last photo). The original design had a band on either side, but my personal preference was to have just one so we had the other notch filled in. Our jeweler was River City Jewelers of Grand Forks; we both had an excellent experience working with them and I definitely recommend them to anyone else in the region.

What’s your favorite thing about your e-ring? (And did your proposal make you cry? I’d love to hear about it!)