Wedding Ring Photo shoot

This past Saturday I had the wonderful opportunity to photograph our wedding rings, Miss Blue and Mr. Shiny.

Aside from some wind and gravity issues they were both a delight to work with. Even getting a bit playful during the shoot and trying to hide in the grass.

Our first shot was a pretty simple idea, take the two colors of the wedding and string the rings on it:
It worked out pretty well and we got two good pictures out of it but having the box underneath them was a quick idea as they wouldn't sit on the ground right at all.

Our next shot I wanted to capture more the seasonal feel of the wedding:
The hard part was figuring out how to balance both rings on there without having one slide off back. Let's just say that a lot of yelling was necessary. Some swearing too.

After that I wanted to get a bit more creative and artsy so I invited our little DEATH to join us:

I'm sure a lot of people could talk about how I was thinking "Of Death til us Part" and the like but really that was the best way I could think to show off the rings while still having a slightly creepy element.

Well at least til I took this picture:
This instantly puts me in the mind of the old Pirate skulls surrounded by treasure.

So what did you think of my little wedding ring shoot?

Soldering

It's a sad sad day.

Tomorrow I have to depart with my beloved. For you see, he must head back to the shop where we got him to be soldered to his brother so they're both ready in time for the wedding.

It's gonna be weird, we haven't spent a day apart since we first met back in October and now he's going away for two whole weeks. Though hopefully half of that time will be spent in a box so I can stop by and see him whenever I want. Not to mention I can finally pull my place holder out.

I think this is when we cue the montage of me and my engagement ring playing on the swings together, enjoying an ice cream, trying on funny hats, and beating old cars with baseball bats.

It's weird how this, along with having my final fitting (I hope it's the last one anyway), that have been on the calendar for a long long time far off into the future so no way it would ever get here is suddenly tomorrow.

So that means in two weeks I'm getting married. Just two little weeks, 14 days, not enough hours, really few minutes, and okay a crap ton of seconds.

I think I've hit a new freak out now.

A trip down memory lane

In reading That Bride's beautiful proposal and seeing her very unique engagement ring I was thinking about sharing my own proposal.

It's quite a bit different, quite a bit goofy, and quite a bit unromantic. So it's just like me.

I suppose this needs some backstory first (well I mean even more backstory than the other backstory I'm telling), we spent a good 2 years doing the long distance thing (which really sucks by the way) so marriage would come up but towards the end I was just happy with living in the same town as him again.

Come this August we moved into our apartment (I know we do our laundry in sin! Never mind just how evil cleaning the toilet bowl while living together is) and at the same time visited our favorite Greek restaurant and saw they were having an Oktoberfest beer dinner in October. We both thought it'd be fun, for me all the German food, for him all the beer.

Fast forward to October and it's the night of the dinner. I come home and for some reason the dishwasher is going and my guy is acting really twitchy. If I stand up he stands up, if I even lean a bit to get a kleenex he stands up and rushes over to me. I'm just thinking that he's really excited about all the fancy beer (and the pierogies).

Well as it draws near to the time to leave I decide that I'd better get ready and first I should shave my legs. First I have to get into one of those evil clam shell packages the razor blades are in. So I head to our junk drawer so I can deforest my stems. This just happens to be right next to our fridge and gives my guy a total heart attack.

He can't take the stress anymore, so as I am holding a pair of scissors in one hand and the razor blades in the other he pulls out this:I was so floored, I didn't see it coming at all. I know I just started laughing I was so surprised (and if you can't tell it's made out of cookie dough so I stole a nibble here and there) I think eventually I got an "Of Course" out.

He'd actually made a ring out of tin foil and I wore that the night while we were having some very interesting Greek/German food. A few weeks later we headed to a jewelry store that I knew had great service and we set out to make the engagement ring (our jeweler was so happy to do something that wasn't a diamond, he still likes to point us out if we go in for a ring cleaning).It was actually my guys idea to get a sapphire, and he'd originally wanted two diamonds on the side but our jeweler recommended using a jacket with two diamonds for the wedding band instead.

I love my very different proposal and extremely different engagement ring. What can I say, we're both really good at being different and weird.

My replacement

One of the problems of getting a jacket/ wraparound wedding ring is that I will have to have it soldered to my engagement ring. So for two weeks I will be without any ring and it will drive me up the wall.

I have worn a rune necklace since I was in 8th grade. It's something simple but not wearing it really bothers me, to the point where I am checking to see where it is at all times. Rather than drive myself nuts always checking to make sure I have or don't have a ring on my finger I thought I'd get myself a simple substitute. This is my replacement ring. Well the one on the right, the one on the left is my engagement ring in crappy light so it looks really dark and foreboding. I got my replacement from, where else, etsy.com. It's from the shop Kim's Jewels that I got in any size I wanted for a whole $7 including shipping.

If like me you are looking for a simple ring but haven't found anything at etsy, there is another option. SilverJewelryClub.com is having a sort of showing off of their products giveaway. Essentially pieces are up for only 15 minutes but all you have to pay is $7 for shipping. Sometimes it's just fun to see what pieces are going to be up for sale later.

Soon enough Mr. replacement and I are gonna have to get acquainted as my ring goes into the shop and his goes in for some engraving (still no idea what we're gonna put on it), but at least out of it all it means I don't have an issue with where to put my engagement ring during the wedding.

Is anyone else gonna need another ring to keep them sane while theirs is away for re-sizing or being soldered?

With this ring, I thee put on credit

We have a habit of going about things all backwards, long before we'd found a church or even gone dress shopping we'd already gotten our wedding rings. It started out early as my guy had mentioned how he'd wanted something different from the standard gold band, something with a design, and he wasn't totally thrilled with the stuff we'd found on-line.

So we started looking early and the first stop was to the store where we got the engagement ring from. We had a wonderful experience with them, where within 3 days we'd visited, picked a stone and had the ring put together. It was during the making the engagement ring that our jeweler had suggested we get a jacket as the wedding band to add some diamonds to it. Mine was easy, but imagine our surprise at how his was just sitting there in the case (and we'd never seen anything like it) and that day we'd bought his.It always amazes me how easy some things just come together and others require hours of debate and arguing (we're still trying to decide who's going to watch the plants during the ceremony). Though I realize that not everyone has had such an easy time, so if you're looking for something different from a "simple gold band" here are a few links we looked at

• Different designs based upon the metal
• Some handmade options
• A black titanium ring
• If you think he needs a crib sheet for the vows
• Someone bitched and whined and moaned here so no more SEO for them.
• A wedding band heart mousepad

Now we just have to decide what we'll have engraved inside. We don't have any cutesy wootsey sayings or pet names for each other, so short of mentioning something about tomatoes we're at a bit of a loss. I'm thinking right now I'll just have "Hey You" and then our wedding date.

It's that or "$.05 deposit in IA or MI"