The Chronicles of Travelling Steve

Friday, August 20, 2004

The Two Rings

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.


Okay so this isn't really appropriate for our particular case, and I'm not likely to set off on an adventure with a chubby gardening friend and a couple of tag-along local juvenile delinquents (at least not without Col anyway), but you just can't help yourself sometimes when pop culture and real life collide. So when I got home this afternoon there was this little box on the kitchen counter.


I wonder what's inside?

And inside it was the results of a furiously creative collaboration between us and Ralf and Jeff, the jewellers par excellence at Vandenburg Jewellers in the city. They are possibly the nicest jewellers that have ever existed on the face of the planet and much kudos needs to go to Inie who tipped us off to their existence when we started our own little odyssey for the rings. Very professional and upfront about what was involved in the process of designing and making the rings, Ralf was so willing to spend plenty of time getting us jewellry newbies up to speed and then by some magical process extracting exactly what we wanted in a wedding band without us even realising that that was what our hearts truly desired.


The Two Rings

As you can see, they are both in a 19kt white gold (with palladium as the alloy because we're both a bit nickel sensitive) which gives them a very cool antiquey feel. Now if I ever develop leprosy and get transported to a magical world of the imagination I'll have all the right tools at hand (so to speak) and hopefully I won't manage to screw it up nearly as completely as Thomas Covenant did. [Stephen Donaldson has a lot to answer for...]

Col chose a magnificent orange sapphire as the centerpiece of her ring which is just so perfect, because really, what other colour could you possibly associate with Col? The setting is really cool as well, a dual band that splits and curves out to hold the bezel for the sapphire. My band has a thin 22kt gold band in the form of a wave inset into it - I'll leave it up to the reader to determine the influences for that particular design decision :-)

We're both unbelievably happy about how they turned out and will be both wearing them as engagement rings. I keep getting strange looks from people when I tell them that I'll be wearing it as an engagement ring as well, but I see no reason why the girl should be proclaiming her attachedness to the world and the guy can't do the same. And I've got an awesome ring and want to wear it too dammit! Whether we decide to get an extra band or something for the actual wedding is still up in the air but probably not for me at least.

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