Prenuptial Braindump

Okay, so, our engagement party is over, Great Western is over, I think it's time to actually start doing wedding-related shit. Here beginneth the brain dump:

Wringing my hands about wedding rings (ooh, I punned!)-- Part Deux

So when last we left our heroine (me), I had given some cashola to the jeweler I lurved in Ventura as a promissory payment on a custom ring... of some kind. I was torn about teal-blue diamonds vs. sapphires and feeling kind of guilty about spending so much money on such a frivolous thing and debating the moral implications of buying diamonds, even ethically sourced ones, and generally wringing my emotional hands about the whole situation.

So I got a call from the jeweler yesterday, and he told me he had ordered some diamonds for me to look over, but the color variations weren't as diverse as he thought I would like. I went in to take a look this morning, and he was right. I was hoping for a five-stone ring that had a very light stone, a medium-colored stone, a dark stone, a medium-colored stone, and a very light stone in a line, but when we put the diamonds next to each other, they all looked like pretty much the same shade of teal. Teal's my favorite color, and the stones were beautiful, but it wasn't quite what I was looking for.

So long story short, I looked at the sapphire ring again, I looked at the diamonds, I mixed up the order of the stones, and finally George (the jeweler) suggested we put a couple of sky-blue diamonds on the ends of the line of teal stones. I took out the two middle stones, bumped the lightest color teal stones into the second and fourth positions, and put two sky-colored stones on the end, and voila--colors I loved, the gradations I wanted, and stones I didn't have to worry would wear out in fifteen years, like sapphires can. Sold.

Until recently, I'd been wrestling with buying a diamond wedding ring. I trusted the jeweler when he said the diamonds were ethically sourced, but I felt guilty about spending what, to me, is a good amount of money on a purely symbolic item. I felt like diamonds are so stereotypically decadent and chi-chi, would I really be happy with a diamond ring, or would I look at it and think I could have had something almost as pretty without the pricetag? Would I feel guilty about spending money other folks didn't have on something that was, on some level, a status symbol?

So I was driving to work on Thursday and it occurred to me--I'm paying for this ring by myself, with money I earned. Doing so isn't going to keep me from paying my bills or put me in debt. Nate's not helping me with it. My family isn't helping me with it. I'm choosing to spend money I earned with my own work on this.

All of a sudden, the ring changed from a petty concession to capitalism (and my fixation on sparkly things) to a symbol of my independence and capability. I'm spending money I earned on this ring, money I worked for. It's not an indulgence or a stereotype, it's a token of achievement. It's a symbol of my ability to take care of myself, to commit myself to a marriage as an independent adult.

That doesn't suck. :)

Wringing my hands about wedding rings (ooh, I punned!)

In which I do some emotional handwringing about wedding rings. Sorry, kinda long, kinda fluffy.

Mangagement ring!

So Nate and I went out to dinner last Thursday night (burger and martini night at the Sidecar, woo!) and I popped the question.

The website lives!

We've officially completed our first co-task! We sat down, went through all the templates on mywedding.com, picked one out, and have the teeny tiny rudiments of a wedding website.

Also, welcome! This blog? Officially and entirely completely about wedding shit. It will all be this trivial, silly, self-absorbed, and childish. I make no excuses. There will, occasionally, be a contemplative post or two around here, but the vast majority of it is going to be the lightest and fluffiest of posts. Enjoy.

There will also be frequent use of the word "motherfucker."

How it all went down

This is the proposal story in its entirety. It'll almost certainly get cut down for Facebook and emails. Really, it's quite long.

Ring sizing and Conversations with Mom.

I'm working on the bigass engagement post, but just wanted to jot a few things down.

I dropped my ring off at the jeweler to be sized yesterday, which was way more nerve-wracking than I'd anticipated. I know it's just a thing, I shouldn't be so attached to it, but I love the hell out of my engagement ring and I didn't love the way the jeweler talked to me--he was pretty bored-looking and dismissive and tried to get me to size my ring down smaller than I wanted originally. I was very direct about what I wanted, and he wrote down the correct size on the order sheet, but it didn't do a lot to inspire customer confidence. I know sizing a ring he didn't make is a small-potatoes job for him, but still. They've done good work for me in the past, so I have no reason to expect them to screw up the ring, but the combination of being nervous about having it altered to begin with and the way the jeweler acted doesn't exactly encourage my confidence. :/

I moved the ring Nate got me for Xmas over from my right hand to my left, which helped. It's still a silly thing to worry so much about.

On a brighter note, my mom seems to be coming around to the whole engagement thing. My mom and I are really close (like talking on the phone 4 or 5 times a week close), and I know she'd been and, to a certain extent, still is nervous about me getting married so young. I imagine telling her we planned to wait a year or two to get married helped assuage her fears, and last night on the phone she said she'd had some time to think about it (we'd been out of town for the weekend and I hadn't spoken to her for a few days) and was actually getting excited. She went far enough to ask if we were planning an engagement party and said "Okay, and I'll help you plan it. I'm the mother of the bride, that's my job." which made me and Nate laugh--her initial reaction to the engagement was "That's wonderful! ...But you're only twelve!"

We haven't spoken more about it in detail, but I'm really glad to hear she's slowly getting on board with the idea. As Nate said when I related the conversation to him (after laughing) "Your family loves you so much!" to which I responded "They love the shit out of me," and it's true. 

Warm fuzzies

The drive to work has officially become "Holy shit my ring looks great in sunlight" time. Seriously, I've been super busy this week, but I have to take some time to get some pictures this afternoon for Facebook and Picasa.

I also have to find time to write down how it all went. I have to get crackin' at work right now, but I definitely want to take some time to write and remember. I have a feeling things are going to start to go very fast.