Wedding rings

Sometimes it takes a few bad apples before you can appreciate a good one. That was the case for Justin and I as we visited jewelry stores looking for our wedding bands.

Before we even began our search, I didn’t think it was going to go well. I didn’t want a wedding band. I love my engagement ring as it is. Wouldn’t another ring just mess it all up?

Despite my hesitation, off we went with our stomachs full from a tasty brunch in Wicker Park. We had high hopes for the store because it had been recommended to us. Remind me to never trust that person again because wow, was it terrible!

The disaster began when I tried to explain what I wanted and the saleswoman told me that it doesn’t exist and that we won’t be able to find it here or at any store. And then she just stared at me. Ummm, OK….should I leave? I thought.

Seeing that she was just going to keep staring at me instead of trying to find a solution, I then asked about a different style. The first ring she pulled out was $4,500. And even though it was expensive, it was not pretty. I tried it on anyway, as well as several other random rings. They were all kinds of shapes, sizes and colors with seemingly no thought behind why it might work next to my engagement ring — which is why they never did.

About a half dozen rings in, the lady finally tells me that the wedding band goes on the inside of the engagement ring, not the outside. Gee, that would have been helpful to know 20 minutes ago! 

But even after I started putting the rings on in the right order, none of them really excited me. Then the saleswoman told me that it was because I wasn’t looking at them right.

“You’re not looking at it how you would normally look at it,” she said. Say what now? I was looking down at my hand. How else would I look at my hand?

She led me over to a full-length mirror.

“There,” she said. “Now you can see it from the right angle.”

OK, this lady is crazy….

I tried holding my hand up to look at it thru the mirror, but that is really awkward! Go, try it right now and you’ll see! Ultimately, my head would just automatically drop and look down directly at my hand — because that’s the only way to actually see it!

Finally the woman selected one that “seemed to be my favorite” and we moved on to Justin’s ring.

At one point she handed us a 400-page book to look through and then left. I thought initially she was giving us the book to take home and peruse later, but no, it was apparently for us to dig into right there on the spot. How’s that for a sales tactic?!

Before we left, the woman took down all our info and said she would price out the rings and get back to us within the next week with a quote. She never got back to us…

But that’s OK because I found my ring at the next store!

During the car ride there, I went on and on about how this was going to be an impossible task, or at least take weeks and weeks and weeks. But as soon as we got there, the woman helping us was already 100 times better than the last. She showed me options that had the same metal, cut and style as my engagement ring — and then listened to my reactions at each of them. Finally she found one that had been paired not with my exact engagement ring, but with one that looked very similar. And bingo, we had a winner!

“Now remember you can’t wear this till after the wedding!” she joked, as I didn’t want to take it off.

I was shocked we were going to be walking away with one that I loved so much. Only a few hours earlier I had been thinking that was never going to happen. Who knew?!

While finishing up the paperwork, the lady made a comment about an extra diamond on the inside of my engagement ring. “But I’m sure you already know about that!”

“Wait, sorry, what’s this?” I said.

Turns out my ring has an extra little diamond on the inside of the band with the inscription “Leo” for the brand. Both Justin and I had no clue!

“And how long have you had this ring?” the woman laughed.

Such a neat little feature! And it’s even more perfect for us because Justin is a Leo. Now all we have to do is get Gemini inscribed on his ring!

Here’s a comparison of the two: The ring on the left was my from the first store. As you can see it’s a different color, different shape, different size, different everything compared to my engagement ring. The picture on the right shows the one I chose. Looks like it goes much better together, right?!

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