With this ring...

We went and picked up our wedding bands today. We ordered them on December 8, so they didn't take too long to come in at all. The wedding is less than six months away, and this definitely made it that much more real!

When we got home, I took photos of the bands, and finally got a good picture of my engagement ring, too.

Here is my engagement ring by itself. It is a platinum solitaire with sidestones (three on each side). I love it! Michael did such a good job picking it out. It has six prongs, which is more secure than four prongs. If one of them bends/breaks, the diamond is usually still pretty snugly in there so it likely won't fall out. With four-prong rings, it's more of a risk. I didn't know anything about this, but Michael's mom gave him that one piece of info to take with him when he went ring shopping!

Here are both of our wedding bands. Michael got a platinum band with

a brushed finished with polished edges. I really like the look of it; I think he made a good choice. As you may have read in my previous blog entries, the band decision was a difficult one for me. I ultimately ended up going with the plain platinum comfort-fit band (3mm). It is the same width as my engagement ring band.

Here is Michael's band, on my thumb. We have to decide exactly what we want engraved on them and take them back to the store within the next month or so (so that we don't have to pay for it--we were technically supposed to have it done at the time of purchase).

Here is my band on my hand, by itself. After we purchased the rings, I realized that I had never even tried on the band by itself (yeah, I'm an idiot). I was so concerned with choosing something that looked nice with my engagement ring that I didn't even think about what it would look like alone. Thankfully, now that it's here, I like how it looks alone! Plain and simple, yes, but it's nice. And honestly, I don't plan on wearing it alone all that often anyway.

Here is the whole "set"--my engagement ring with my wedding band. I can't wait to wear them together. Now that we have the bands in the house, I keep wanting to go and "try it on" again. Hopefully I get over that... otherwise, I might have to have Michael hide it from me somewhere!

177 more days!