Guess who called today

The jeweler. My ring is done.

That's right, done. You know, the ring that a stupid saleslady told me would take 10 days, and couldn't possibly be done by Friday. Turns out that the "10 day process" only takes 2 days.

When the woman called me (who just so happened to be Michelle, the lady who originally told me it could be done), she said, "I'm calling to let you know your ring is ready." I immediately said, "Get outta here!" She said, "Well, I couldn't let you go without your engagement ring for too long!" I told her that I appreciated it, but was very surprised to hear from them so soon since the other lady had made it seem like it would be a stretch to get it done by Friday. So she said, "Well, you just stick with me from now on!" I told her I will!

So tonight, Michael and I went over to pick it up. I was anxious to see it. It looks AWESOME. It is SO sparkly that it nearly blinded all of us as she took it out of the bag. And there is not a scratch on it. It looks just like it did a year ago when Michael gave it to me for the first time. And I had forgotten how good it looked! :)

It looks so good, in fact, that I refuse to wear it. I'm voluntarily living with a naked hand until Friday. And that's that.

Naked!

I am naked. My left hand, that is.

I had to take my engagement ring and drop it off at the jeweler this afternoon. I wanted to get it deep cleaned and polished right before the wedding so that it would more closely match the "newness" of my band.

I'm bummed to be without it. I've already had a few panic "Oh my God!" moments today when I realized it wasn't on my hand. I guess I never realized how much I fiddle with it (touch it with my other fingers, play with it, etc.) until now that it's gone.

I'm also a little anxious about having it out of my possession... and the woman at the jeweler certainly didn't make me feel better about it. I go into the jewelry store on a fairly regular basis. If I'm in the area, I like to stop in and have them pop my ring into the cleaner. So I'm familiar with most of the people there. This one particular woman... I'm not very fond of her. She tends to be pretty bitchy most of the time, and I'm always disappointed if I have to interact with her. Well, today, as luck would have it... I walk in and she is the one to help me.

Back up a few weeks here... when Michael and I went in at the end of May to get our bands engraved, I told the woman there at the time that I wanted to have my engagement ring polished/cleaned before the wedding on June 21. I asked when I should bring it in to drop it off, and she looked at a calendar and told me to drop it off on June 16. She said it would be done for me on Wednesday or Thursday.

So today I walk up to the counter and the bitchy woman asks me how she can help me. I tell her, "I'm getting married on Saturday and I want to drop my ring off to get it cleaned and polished." She looks at me with wide eyes and says, "for THIS Saturday?" And I said, "yes." She responds, "Well, this process normally takes 10 days. We can't have it done for you by Saturday."

I proceed to tell her that one of the other ladies told me to bring it in on the 16th for my June 21st wedding. She asks what this person looks like, and I tell her. She goes into the back room and I can hear her say, "Michelle, did you tell some girl she could bring in her engagement ring today for cleaning/polishing for her wedding THIS Saturday?" And I hear Michelle respond, "Yes, we can get it done by Friday" like it was no big deal. *sigh* So annoying.

The bitchy woman comes back out and begrudgingly starts filling out a service form. She says she's going to write Michelle's name all over the form because she doesn't want "to get in trouble." Whatever, lady, just do it. I watch her as she starts to fill it out, and I notice she checks "14k" under metal. I think to myself... I didn't think platinum has carats.

She goes off and she's measuring my ring, writing down a description of it, etc. She comes back to the counter, and I see her writing, "Please polish/rhodium dip ring." I look at her and say, "Excuse me, but the ring is actually platinum." She gives it a quick look and says, all snotty, "It is?!" So she crosses off 14k, marks platinum, and then scribbles out the "rhodium dip" part on her instructions.

Meanwhile, I'm silently screaming in my head... THIS LADY WAS ABOUT TO RHODIUM DIP MY PLATINUM RING!! If I hadn't been paying attention, lord knows what would have happened. Would the person doing the work on the ring have even noticed that it was platinum before dipping it? ARGHHHH!!

We have had nothing but great things to say about this jeweler in the year since Michael purchased my ring and proposed. They have been really good to us; we even returned there to buy our wedding bands. But jeez! They certainly didn't inspire any confidence today. Needless to say, I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my ring... which I guess is now scheduled for FRIDAY (not Wednesday or Thursday like I had originally been told).

Like I need another thing to do on Friday. Lovely.

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!

Symbols of Eternity

We went to The Source today and officially ordered our wedding rings. I ended up going with the plain platinum wedding band. The one with the channel set diamonds (that matched my engagement ring) was too much for me. I think I'm going to be happy with my choice. Michael went with his favorite from back in October, too. He got a platinum band with a brushed finish with polished edges.

We thought we were going to be able to get a discount on them with a coupon we received in the mail, but wouldn't you know--"special orders" aren't eligible, and given that you have to order a ring in your size, pretty much everything is a special order. Bastards.

Oh well, we never expected to get that coupon in the mail in the first place, so we ended up paying what we budgeted for them. And based on a tip from one of the best negotiators I know (a guy I work with, Jose)--we took cash with us to the store to hopefully be able to negotiate a slightly lower price, just based on the fact that they wouldn't have to process our credit card.

It worked--we got 5% off the total just for paying for them right then and there. It's not much nof a discount, but it's something!

And now that's one more thing off the to-do list and paid for. We expect them to be delivered to the store within three weeks. We have until then to decide what we want to have engraved on them. Interestingly enough, we hadn't even thought about that prior to going in there. It is just one of those details that has managed to completely slip my mind.

To have the date engraved is free, but if we want to add something else, it is $12. After what we paid for the rings, $12 (or $24 for the two of them) is really not a big deal, haha. At first, we couldn't really think of anything meaningful to put on there, but tonight I thought maybe it would be cool to do "I'll Always Be Right There." It's the title of the song we're going to use for our first dance. Not only that, but it's a nice message to carry with us throughout our marriage, eh?

200

As of today, we have 200 days left until our wedding day. Tomorrow, it will be 100-and-something. Wow. Time is really starting to fly now. Probably no more than a month ago, I was bitching about how it was still so far away--not anymore.

At least not at the moment.

Right now, I'm drowning in DIY projects--both for myself, and for others. It's nice to be busy, but it can also be overwhelming. I just have to take one thing at a time. I know I have enough time to take care of everything, but it just seems that with the holidays, things seem that much more hectic all around. I haven't even done any Christmas shopping yet.

I was really hoping for a snow day this morning so I would have a day to work on nothing but my own projects. But alas, even though it snowed all night and day, and the roads were pretty terrible... we still had work. Oh well... hopefully soon.

Michael and I plan to go add onto our registry at Bed Bath & Beyond this week. Some of our family members are looking to buy us gifts off of the registry, so we wanted to add a bit more variety.

Yesterday, I came home to a really lovely piece of direct mail. It's not very often I say something like that. I mean, c'mon, it's junk mail 99% of the time. But this was from The Source, the jewelry store at which Michael bought my ring. In it was a 20% off coupon for a $600+ purchase. Well, it just so happens we have a relatively big purchase to make there--our wedding rings. So we plan to go this weekend to purchase/order them. That'll be one more check off the list. It's not something I planned to do this early, but we might as well take advantage of the 20% off!

Today, I came home to a package on my porch (love when there are packages!). My supplies for my DIY jewelry came in from Fire Mountain Gems. Yayyyy.... but now there is just another DIY project staring me in the face. I'm actually really excited about starting this one, though, since it's something different. I'm sort of sick of paper, fabric, and paint at this point, so it'll be nice to spend some time on something else for a change.

My main problem is that I've been so busy with work, errands, holiday functions, etc. that when I'm home, I just want to collapse on the couch and relax. But I also have to be productive, or I'm never going to get this stuff done.

I'm off to channel my inner Martha Stewart.

Or my inner Al Bundy.

Registering and Ring Shopping

Well, it's Sunday, which usually means we stay home and watch football all day. But today, the Buffalo Bills weren't playing since they are playing Monday night, so we decided to do something with ourselves for once.

We started off by going to brunch at the Lodge at Woodcliff, a really nice place that we never would have gone to except for the fact that Michael's parents gave us a gift certificate for free brunch for two. It's this huge buffet with so much food, so we stuffed ourselves, then got to work.

We drove over to Bed Bath & Beyond and started our registry. That was fun, but completely overwhelming. I was looking forward to it but as soon as the saleslady gave me the scanner, I looked around and just thought, "Oh my god, where do I even start??" We ended up making one lap around the store and spent as much time in each section as we could bear. I wasn't really in the mood to do much comparison shopping, so we didn't look at flatware, dinnerware, sheets, etc. Instead, we generally stuck to the simpler things like kitchen gadgets, towels, and some serving pieces. We spent about an hour there and then left. We still have a lot of time until we're really going to have people using the registry, so we can go back and add stuff when we feel like it.

From there, we went across the street to the jewelry store where Michael bought my engagement ring. We wanted to take a first look at wedding bands to get an idea of what we might like and how much we should budget for the rings. Michael found something he liked pretty quickly, and seems pretty set on it, so that's good. It's a platinum band with like a brushed finish with polished edges. That's probably a pretty crappy description, but oh well. Actually, it looks pretty similar to this one: http://www.bluenile.com/product_details.asp?oid=3205.

For me, I thought I would just get the band with channel-set diamonds that matches my engagement ring (it's made specifically for my ring). So for me, I thought it'd be a pretty simple shopping trip. But there was only one problem--I HATED it on my finger. It was too much "stuff." It looked like diamonds had thrown up on my finger. Which, for a lot of women, I guess isn't a bad thing. In fact, I love how it looks on a lot of my friends. I could probably name at least five people I know who have diamonds in their engagement ring bands and also in their wedding bands, and it looks beautiful. Which is why I thought I'd like it on me, too. But I don't know. I'm thinking I'll have to go back sometime and try it again, maybe try on a few that are different sizes/widths/etc. but I was just not liking it. So instead, I found a really nice totally plain platinum band that I liked. Totally boring, yes, but hey... it looked nice with my engagement ring and I'm a relatively simple girl, so I don't need a whole lot of bling. We didn't buy anything at this point, so we're going to go back. We just wanted to get an idea.

So that was our lovely little Sunday. And we were back home a little after 2:00 p.m. so the day of football-watching was not completely lost. :)