May 31, 2010
I know I said that the next entry would be about the engagement, but if I am to go in chronological order, I would need to back up to the choice of the ring…
We spent Valentine’s Day weekend in Portland, Maine because we wanted to go somewhere and neither of us had been there and we’d heard it was a cool place. By the time Michael started to look for rooms (three days before the weekend, which was also Presidents’ Day weekend this year) we couldn’t find anything available. Luckily, my good friend, Melissa, offered up her apartment to us as she wasn’t going to be there that weekend.
We took her up on her offer and spent a few lovely days there, walking around town, eating at good restaurants, relaxing just doing…well, nothing. On our way out of town, we stopped downtown so that Michael could buy a pair of shoes for work that he’d seen the day before. Next door to the shoe store was a jewelry store. Something caught my eye so I asked if we could go in. The something was NOT an engagement ring by the way – it was not “entrapment”. We wandered through the first room of beautiful, and very original, designs, each of us pointing out to the other one what we liked. We came into the next room and…eek!…there were cases and cases of engagement and wedding rings. I stammered and told Michael we could leave because I had no intention of even looking at rings and he replied, “Well, let’s look.” After twenty minutes of perusing the cases, we realized we’d have to put more money in the parking meter (on which we had only 37 minutes) and we ended up spending a little more than an hour looking at the choices and getting ideas of what we liked.
I had only a few requirements, the most important of which being that the ring had to have a low-enough profile that I could get my hand in and out of my pocket with no problem while wearing it. So, each ring I tried on went through what we deemed, “The Pocket Test”. If I could get the ring in my pocket without catching it, it would be a contender. So it came down to the ring I now wear and another ring, very different in style, with three square diamonds in a row across the band. So it was between that ring and “my” ring. Michael told me to try one on and walk away. I waved my hand through the air as if I was talking (well, more like I was flapping my non-existent wings in public). Then I tried on the other ring and did the same thing. I tried on “my” ring the second time, and Michael said, “Yup, that’s it.” It was so much more sparkly and it fit perfectly on my hand, didn’t catch on my pocket, and was exactly what I had envisioned.
I then asked Michael what he would like as a wedding ring. His choice was a very simple white gold band. Nothing fancy. When I mentioned I thought that a wedding band with diamonds all around the band to match the engagement ring would be ideal, he simply said, “No.” “What?” I asked. He said, “I said no. Our rings have to match. We’re going through this together and they have to match.” And then I almost cried in public in the jewelry store – I teared up and looked at the ceiling willing the tears not to fall. And Denise, the owner, made that cute “Aww…” face that people make when watching something very touching and private and wiped the corner of her own eye. We got their business card, with the particulars of the ring on it, and we left for home.
D. Cole Jewelers is the store where we found it. The designer of the ring is A. Jaffe. It’s 18 kt. gold and it’s perfect.
And he didn’t have it with him when he proposed a month later…but that’s another story.
LOVELY!!! Best news of 2010! Love you!