A NEW / OLD WEDDING RING

you do sometimes find what you're looking for, even if it takes a little longer than expected to find it.

earlier last year, while doing laundry of all things, i managed to smack my left hand so hard against the wall that one of the prongs in my diamond engagement ring broke right clean in half. "BOOM!" to quote henry holbrook. i got a cute little finger bruise out of the deal, but you should have seen the other guy! (good news is that white toothpaste, as the good lord says, really is a renter's best friend.)

just after christmas my mom had to pick up some jewelry she'd sent out for repair and i finally took a minute to get the thing looked at. apparently i hadn't just broken the prong, i'd chipped the diamond. who even knew!? diamonds... fault lines... i got a proper scolding for wearing it while broken and a repair estimate that nearly knocked my socks off. i'm sure i gave her a real beauty of a "whaaaaaaat?!" face. it felt like a good one, anyway.

so you know when your car gets totaled and everybody rejoices because nobody got hurt but you still get a new car? (this happened at our house when i was a kid. i thought it was so strange when my mom would tell friends about the accident and they'd say, "oh that's so great!" like.... what??) of course i loved my engagement ring, but i never really loved my engagement ring. what i really wanted when we got engaged was an antique. something from the 1920s with filigree work and low set, quiet little diamonds, but this was 2003 and there weren't no etsy, if you know what i mean, so instead i sketched up a design and found a jeweler to build it. he swore up and down he could do it, and then... let's just say we had some communication issues. we cleaned through the budget on minor tweaks and never got anywhere close to what we'd agreed on. bummer, what are you gonna do. i decided to love it anyway, though we were planning to replace the setting "someday," just as soon as it made sense. so this has been in the works for, oh, how long have we been married now? ten years? well. long story short.... the time is now. the day is here! (sorry, drive by les mis reference). after all this time, we finally found her. we are thrilled. (yes, even brandon!) 

now this is more like it.

we scoured the internet for weeks before finally stumbling upon OaksBoutique on etsy. jackpot. gorgeous selection, and really fair prices. here's a tiny bit of detail the ring--she's got a 14k yellow gold filigree band with a little over a carat weight of hand-cut diamonds set in white gold. really divine filigree work in that white gold, too. if she were to have a name she'd have to be called estelle. but who names their wedding ring? oh swoon, etsy. swooooon. (imagine the damage i could have accomplished if etsy and pinterest were around when i was planning my wedding. that is a truly, truly frightening thought.) for now we're tucking our sweet broken engagement ring away for another "someday," when we'll dream up something fitting to do with her. she'll always be so special to me, i couldn't possibly hide her away for too long.

oh hey, brandon! i do! again!