Rings

Once we decided to get married, our minds and conversation turned to more practical things such as rings.  A wedding ring is the most precious piece of jewelry a woman will ever own. It is something you wear everyday for your entire life and signifies the love and commitment you make to each other.
One of the stronger points of our relationship is our years of friendship. We know each other so well and have shared in so many life experiences that we can be open and honest with each other always and not have to worry about silly little things causing hurt feelings and misunderstandings.
Are you wondering why I included that last thought? I guess it is because I think the selection of wedding rings is one of those tough decisions we have to make when we get married. What if you pick out something that your partner doesn’t like or even worse what if you are the one given a ring you really don’t like? All those diamond commercials make it look so romantic but those of us with real life experience know better.
Being practical and knowing we were going to wear these rings everyday for the rest of our life led us to think hard about it – we didn’t want something ordinary and anything we would choose would probably be way out of our price range . In the end we designed our own rings.
 We wanted the history and meaning of our rings  to be part of our ceremony so we put it in writing for Priscilla (the JP). Our thought was that she could edit this and tell the story in her words but she decided the best way was to tell it from both of our perspectives.

The story of our rings ( From both points of view) and our own ring vow that we made up…….

Karen:
Early in the 1990’s, my Grandmother was going through her jewelry and gave me a pair of aquamarine earrings set in white gold with the old-fashioned screw backs. She told me of how my Granddad had brought them to her as a gift from his travels while working down in South America. He gave them to her with his love and then she passed them on to me with her love. I held on to them for many years, never really wearing them just taking them out to admire and enjoy special memories of them once in awhile. I always thought about how I would like to do something special with them but the perfect opportunity never arose. This year when Kris and I decided that we wanted to be together forever and marry, I thought of them again and wanted to share the love they were given with. One day when we talking about wedding rings I pulled them out and told her about my wish to have the stones made into rings for her and I. With the aquamarines and old pieces of jewelry, we together created our rings of love.

Kris:
Karen got out her jewelry box and showed me the most beautiful pair of aquamarine earrings I had ever seen. She said, “My Granddaddy brought these to Grandmother from South America when he worked there.” I must have oohed and awed appropriately because next she said, “My Granddaddy gave these to Grandmother as a gift of love and now I would like to give them to you as a gift of love.” From there we decided to design our own wedding rings using these stones and along the way we added pieces of jewelry we both had accumulated over a lifetime. These rings contain bits and pieces of both our lives and are built around a gift of love that has endured generations.

Ring Vows: With this ring, I share with you the gift of endless love and the many pieces of my life that have made me into the person I am today.

For Karen to share this precious gift of love from her Grandparents with me was the most wonderful gift in the world. There are not enough words in the English language to describe what my ring means to me.   I have to add that photos simply can not capture the detail and beauty - the band is white gold; the actual mounting is a celtic trinity with 5 small diamonds on each side.

And that is the story of our rings!
Have a good day!