Weddingbee Blog

I love my engagement ring. In case you haven’t seen it before, it’s an oval halo setting with a flat pavé ½-eternity band on three sides of the shank.

One of my favorite things about my ring is that it is designed to sit flush with a wedding band. Unlike a lot of halos which have wide, low baskets, mine is prong-set above the band, and open below so that the wedding band can come right up against the engagement ring without leaving a gap.

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When Mr. Spaniel and I picked my ring out, we tried it with the matching band. The band was made by the same manufacturer—the pavé band was the same width and height, with diamonds of the same shape and size and spacing. It was a perfect match, and Mr. Spaniel and I planned to buy it closer to the date.

A bit of advice: when you want something, and no substitute will do, BUY IT WHEN YOU SEE IT. Recently, we decided we were ready to buy my wedding ring and went back to the shop where we purchased the engagement ring last September to get it. Apparently, the store no longer does business with the company who made my engagement ring; they don’t carry the matching wedding band anymore, and can’t or won’t tell us who made it so that we can find it ourselves. The only information we have to go on is that the manufacturer is in Hong Kong, which is about as close to no information as I can imagine.

I tried a few other pavé wedding bands, but none were quite right: the metal was more prominent causing the spacing of the diamonds not to align, or the band didn’t come up high enough, or it was too wide, or it was way too expensive. We were looking for the perfect match, at $500. The best we could find was a similar ring that wasn’t a match (or even quite as good) for $750. I may be the only one who ever notices a mismatch that slight, but you can bet your spaniel I’d be noticing… every day. And I’m not really the kind of person to forget it over time, either.

So instead of the beautiful and bling-y match, which we can’t find, we’ll be getting me a plain white gold band, which will be a more practical option for me that I can wear daily and during most activities. I’m pretty okay with this. It will be a comfortable ring, and I won’t have to worry about little diamonds coming loose and falling out or needing to be cleaned all the time. But don’t get me wrong: I am hugely disappointed. I loved the way the matching ring looked with my wedding band, and I was looking forward to all the extra sparkle. So we’re thinking that, on some future anniversary, we’ll either get a custom band to match the engagement ring, or buy a new engagement and wedding set and re-set the oval diamond in it. Maybe we could do the Ritani Endless Love setting that I loved first?

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If you got your engagement and wedding rings separately, did you end up with a different set than you’d imagined?