Weddingbee Blog

I’ve been dating the guy for almost eight years. I can feel any shift, even a minor one, in the tectonics of our relationship. He had been a little off—I could feel it in my bones. I asked him a few times if he was holding something back. I’m not sure what I thought it was—nothing serious. Maybe his work research wasn’t going the way he had hoped. He shrugged it off with careful wording.

One night a few weeks later, he looked over at me and asked, “Do you know how you asked if I’m keeping something from you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I have been.”

Wow. SO NOT the way to start this conversation. While I am lightheaded in panic, he continues:

“For the past few weeks, I’ve been designing a ring for you.”

…
(I mean, what do you say to that? Thank you?)

“OK…”

(At this point, I am trying to figure out why he would tell me this. Was he proposing now?!)

I furrowed my eyebrows. “Don’t you want it to be a surprise?”

He thought for a moment. “Yes. But not as much as I want it to be perfect.”

He went on to tell me that he had gone into a local jewelers with pictures and sketches and ideas. He did this without a word to his buddies, his brothers, or his parents, making me officially the first person to know. He told me that when he picked out the stone, it had involved a little velvet pouch of loose diamonds and a magnifying monocle, and he said that it made him feel like an international man of mystery. The jeweler-rendered CAD images and the wax model of the ring had just come in. The wax model was specifically made of BLUE wax, and it didn’t look quite the way he thought it would. He was afraid the “height” would overwhelm my hand.

(It is probably important that you know that I wear a size 3.75 ring.)

“Well,” I said. “Do you want me to see it before?”

“Not especially. Do you want to see it?”

I had never really thought of the possibility, but my gut feeling was clear. “No.”

He nodded. “I figured.”

“So why are you telling me?”

He shrugged. “Because I feel conflicted about it, and I always tell you when I’m conflicted about something.”

We hatched a plan. The next day, he would take me to the jewelers. He instructed the staff not to say a word about the ring—not about the cut of the stone, the design, the metal. Not anything. I would close my eyes and let him put the blue-wax-model ring on my finger to see it on me. However, the jeweler mentioned that the model could break. It might be easier to find another ring in the showcase of comparable height so he could see. That way, I didn’t have to even close my eyes. He and the jeweler searched the cases while I sat in the little consulting room.

They came back, and he crouched down to hand me the test-drive ring. This ring of comparable height was very…clunky. Metal-y. It was…a lot.

“DON’T KNEEL DOWN WITH A RING THAT IS NOT MINE!” I squealed.

The jeweler laughed. I put it on my finger. Mr. PD examined it from every direction, making “hmm” noises. Then I gave the ring back, and he stepped outside to speak with the consultant. We were quiet as we walked to the car. He looked calm. Settled.

When we had both shut our doors, I looked at him. “Do you feel better?”

He nodded. “Much.”

I nodded back as he started the car.

“And by the way,” he said. “I intentionally picked out that ring for you to try on because it looks NOTHING like what I designed for you.”

“Thank goodness,” I said.

He laughed and took me to get coffee like the all-star significant other that he is.

And that was that. It was simple and kind of weird and perfectly imperfect. Like us. This little piece of our engagement story, which is an even littler piece in a much longer story, fits exactly as it should. Somehow, the way he divulged the ring—knowing himself, knowing me so confidently—made me love him even more. And I didn’t even have the ring on my finger yet.

Did you know about the ring before the proposal?