Weddingbee Blog

While Mr. Spaniel and I considered whether we were willing to drop the extra cash on an imperfect match of a wedding band (or buy a plain ring instead), we thought we’d visit a few other jewelry stores and see if we could find anything better. Although I was pleased as pie with my engagement ring, I was just plain mad that the shop was so unhelpful in finding the matching band, and I didn’t want to give them more of our money. In fact, I was willing to spend (a little) more to give our business to someone else who hadn’t already annoyed us.

We ended up walking into a big chain store after our first failed attempt at ring shopping, hoping that we’d find something closer to the original and apparently unavailable band just through the law of large numbers—with so much variety, surely they’d have something that would work! I am so glad we gave it another shot before we went and bought a ring I wasn’t as excited about, because we found a Miss Spaniel-can-hardly-complain-about-it-it’s-so-similar wedding band at Robbins Bros! It’s true that the profile isn’t quite as high as my e-ring (part of the reason is that my e-ring is too big and needs to be re-sized), but everything else lines up pretty much perfectly.

The salesperson we met with asked to see my engagement ring, disappeared for about 90 seconds and then came back with the perfect band. AND it was $5 less than the original one. $5! What a savings.

Even better, they cleaned and dipped my engagement ring (re-plated it with the rhodium that keeps white gold white and sparkly), and now it looks as pretty as the day we brought it home the first time.

I know we would have spent a lot more if we’d bought my engagement ring there (the same shop where I first met the Ritani and the accompanying overpriced diamond), but I almost think it could have been worth it. The service we’ve received there was tremendously superior to what we’ve experienced from the shop where we bought my engagement ring. Oh well! I guess now we know for… next time? An upgrade?

Would you be willing to pay more for better service down the road, or did you look for the best deal up front?