Weddingbee Blog

We went shopping for wedding bands fairly early in our planning process because I was apprehensive about finding a band that would go with my ring. You see, my engagement ring has a different sort of setting. In addition to the halo around the diamond, there is also another circle that sits flush against my finger. It’s hard to describe, so maybe this will help:

I love, love, love this feature of the ring! It was actually one of my favorite things about it when I got it. However, because of this design element, a wedding band cannot sit flush against it. Hence, I wanted to get this band situation sorted out early.

Mr. Burger had gotten my e-ring online (diamond from Blue Nile and setting from James Allen), and he had a wonderful experience (the results were obviously amazing). But since I was so nervous about how the band would look with my engagement ring, we decided to shop in stores.

One day, while at the mall with my sister, we stopped into Reeds, a chain jewelry store in Maryland. The girl there was super helpful, totally understood what I was talking about, and immediately suggested what was called an insert band. Basically, it was like two wedding bands welded together with a space in between for the e-ring:

It was too good to be true! My ring sat nicely right in between the bands with the halo perched atop all this bling. It looked great! I rushed home to tell Burger about it, and eventually the two of us got back to the store and placed the order. We ordered the wedding band a size larger than my e-ring because it was so thick in comparison, and then the wait began. Four weeks later, it was here, and I was on my way to Reeds to pick it up!

When I arrived, I found that the awesome sales girl who had sold us the ring had since quit, and I was left to deal with less-than-awesome people in her stead. I tried on the band with my ring, and it barely went onto my finger.

You see, in my haste to place the ring order, I hadn’t allowed the logical, engineer part of brain think about this situation for very long. Since the engagement ring dropped into the insert band, no matter how big the band itself was, it would never have a diameter any larger than the distance from the top of the insert band to the bottom of my engagement ring. Oh. Duh.

The girl in the store said, “Oh well, you’ll just have to re-size your engagement ring to be larger. No problem.” I’m sorry? No problem? Huge problem! I don’t want to resize my engagement ring! It fits perfectly, and we still have a year until our wedding. Plus what if I ever wanted to wear my e-ring alone again (I know this is unlikely, but still). I was devastated.

So I did what I think anyone in my situation (who didn’t want to resize their engagement ring) would do - I asked to return it. Imagine my surprise when I was told that I couldn’t.

“No. You cannot return the ring.”

Um, why? It wasn’t what I had expected, it didn’t fit, and, as my new sales girl told me, “they should have told you this when you ordered it” - so why couldn’t I return it?

Number one, because I was given a sale price (seemed amazing at the time). Number two, it’s just “their policy”. They called the manager, called their regional representative, and no one would budge. They wouldn’t even give my store credit to get a different band. This ring was mine. To keep. Great.

At this point, I will skip the rest of the drama in this story. Let me make a very long story short by saying that I totally went to battle with Reeds and eventually did get (force) them to return the ring. For store credit, of course.

So I was left with a ridiculous amount of money on a gift card to a store which I now hated with a deep passion. We decided to make the best of it, and we both got some nice wedding bands.

Burger had always wanted a plain, yellow gold ring (he said that he had always loved his Dad’s ring - aww), and that’s just what he got! It looks amazing on him (am I the only one who thinks that guys with wedding bands are sexy?).

My new band is very, very pretty. It’s much more simple than the insert band - very thin with tiny pave set diamonds (like my e-ring). It can either sit away from the e-ring, or sit flush by going under the halo. I will probably just end up wearing it however it ends up hanging out on my finger.

(source for wedding band photos)

All in all, we got some nice rings out of the whole ordeal. But I will never be going back to Reeds (except of course to finish spending the money I have left on this gift card). I cannot stress enough the amazing customer service Burger had both with Blue Nile and James Allen. I would recommend buying online if at all possible, because you can always return it if you don’t like it!

Did you have any trouble buying rings in person or online?