Hitched

Y’all! Can you believe it’s been five years since #JT111216? I can’t either and the husband felt the same.

I’ll be honest with you, I had very little enthusiasm for a grand celebration because we’re in the middle of the pandemic and I still feel bummed out over Rocky canceled first birthday celebration. I was okay with the usual exchange gift, hehehe!

My husband, on the other hand, was scandalized at the thought of not celebrating such a milestone year. He said he refuses to not celebrate our anniversary with a getaway + some gifts (to me). He totes asked me what I want for our anniversary and I blurted out “diamonds!”

So he got me a pair of stud earrings and a 5-diamond ring (one gem for every year, yiheee). Guys, I totally picked my own gifts and I LOVE DEM DIAMONDS TO BITS! To bits!

And you know I just needed an excuse to get us couple rings, right? So, I know of this Ukrainian jeweler with a gorgeous his and hers ring design. I had the ring customized by picking a pink and blue sapphire for the main gem. I read that 5th anniversaries are best commemorated with sapphire and sapphire happens to be my FAVE gem.

I had these done in old-time-y rose gold with yummy thick band so they’re seen from a mile away when worn. Absolutely heavenly, yeah?

I was beside myself with excitement! I couldn’t hide the surprise for long, however. Because we made it a point to show each other our gifts just to make sure we like what we’re getting. Believe me, there’s a hilarious story about this little tradition but that’s a story for another time.

I also got him a new NB2K game, which was given sometime in September because it launched and my husband needs to get it. So the game came first and then the ring.

We’ll cap off our celebration by heading to the Hilton Hotel for a weekend break next week. I did a review here, in case you’re curious. It’s one of our fave hotels now.

We’ll actually stay there twice, November and December. The second will be for Damien’s birthday. The original plan was to celebrate Damy’s 3rd birthday at home but Rocky’s 1st birthday celebration at the hotel got canceled so we decided to just celebrate both birthdays in the hotel.

Anyhoo, so excited for our anniversary celebration! It will be the first real break that we’ll have after our eldest was born, which is more than three years ago. Times flies so fast!

 

Oh, happy days! After waiting for what felt like forever, our engagement ring and wedding bands are here! But first, a little insight:

I have nothing against traditions but personally, I find public proposals overrated. Of course, I’m also reclusive so maybe that’s the reason why I dislike the attention that a public proposal brings.

My fiance was disappointed when I told him I want none of that. When we agreed to get married, we did so by talking about it, setting the date, and planning everything. That includes the rings.

Now, I  have a very critical eye and particular taste. And as much as I love my fiance, his tastes don’t really jive with mine.

Wedding rings and engagement rings are the most important jewelry a woman will ever wear in her life. No, it’s not *just* a ring, it represents the relationship. 

If you fuck it up, the poor woman will be stuck with these rings forever. Worse, she’ll quietly resent the design eventually causing discord. So yes, an engagement ring is a big deal and not just for its price tag, but for what it represents.

I’ll be honest, I almost did not survive the waiting game but here we are, hahaha!

I know exactly what my dream engagement ring looks like: I wanted a round diamond with tiny  sapphires on the sides. I’ve always been fond of sapphires and I wanted to incorporate the stone into my engagement ring.

Also, the stones have to be natural, no lab made nonsense, I want the real thing. Not earth friendly, I know, but this ring is everything to me and all details must be right.

I tried being sneaky, nudging the fiance to the right direction: giving pictures of my dream engagement ring to my best friend in case the boyfriend asks for tips. The pics that I shared with my best friend featured rings with blue sapphires as accent stones on the sides.

Initially, the boyf wanted to go for a princess cut center stone and I was like, “heyl naw.” A princess cut just isn’t practical for me (it snags a lot, it has sharp edges, and I’m a klutz) plus, I honestly dislike how it looks.

Because my fiance is smart (and he got tired of his ring ideas being shot down all the time XD), he let me design my own e-ring, saying he wanted me to “love everything” about it. Ladies, I lucked out, I know! I’m quite relieved that I was a part of the design process because I have plans of staring at my e-ring for the rest of my natural life. I must like what I see XD

TRIVIA: Traditionally, tri-stone engagement rings symbolize the “past, present, and future.”

My ering is kinda like a traditional tri-stone but not really in the sense that the side stones are smaller. I did this on purpose because I wanted the diamond to be the center of attention. With larger, competing side stones, the eyes will be drawn to the darker stones instead of the diamond.

Here’s my dream ring:

 

The boy did gooood! My goodness, she’s so exquisite in person! I love that the sapphires are not deep blue or almost black, the blue is still noticeable even under dim light.

The band is very slim, thinner than I expected but it made the ring so comfortable to wear. I usually remove my rings when I work because they bother me a bit but not this one!

As for the diamond, the boyf went for quality 🙂 The center diamond is a .51 carat VVS1 color I radiant cut diamond while the side stones are .010 carats (? each) blue sapphires. It came with a certification of authenticity and grade by the jeweler. The fiance been offered larger but poorer quality stones and he said no, he wanted fire and clarity 😀

FYI: VVS1 is just an inclusion away from IF or internally flawless. This means the stone I have has one to two inclusions or flaw. The cut gives off a spectacular light show! It sparkles like no other! I’m happy with his choice 😀 The diamond looks larger on my size 5 finger.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIKcmrarmLo]

BTW, if you’re shopping for an engagement ring, the stone size isn’t everything, especially if the wearer’s hands are small. I have to admit, I initially wanted a larger stone but I didn’t want the boyfriend to go neck-deep in debt so I went with a half carat diamond.

I did lots of research (can’t you tell?) and found out that the larger the hand, the smaller the stone looks. So, .50 to .70 carat stones look perfect on 4.5 to 5.5 ring size.

Anyhoo, for the wedding bands, I’ve already made a lengthy post about the plain band, which is my second wedding ring. It’s a simple 2 mm white gold domed band in comfort fit. I think that means the band is completely filled in as opposed to having hollow portions on the inner.

The other wedding ring is a 2.5 mm white gold band encrusted with alternating natural sapphires and white diamonds (totalling .15 carats) in a half eternity setting. Gorgeous combination!

So, why did I choose the half eternity? I find that this setting is sturdier and more practical than a true eternity band. There’s no need to worry about losing or cracking a stone when you’re doing household chores or carrying stuff because the gems are set on the sides of the band. Here they are as a trio stack:

Finally, my fiance’s wedding band is a simple size 9.5 4mm  gold band with a tiny .03 carat diamond in the center. I love that our wedding bands don’t match but look great together, kinda like how different our personalities are but we work well as a couple, hahaha!

So, after a long process of picking the right jeweler, choosing the materials, stones, and whatnot, here’s a nice family pic of our set:

All rings are done by Diamond Fire Manila, a boutique jewelry store located along Jupiter st. in Makati. Cherry (whom I think owns the joint) is such an easy person to work with. The rings turned out exactly how we wanted it. I highly recommend her store!

A tip when buying an engagement ring or any jewelry for that matter, always let the jeweler know about your set budget. I’ve seen some guys balking at the price of a certain ring and instead of working things out to fit their budget, they end up buying from a really shady store or settling for sims.

For instance, the sapphire and diamond-encrusted ring I wore here in this post costs PhP 49K in store. That’s way beyond our total budget for our set (bride and groom’s) and this is just one ring. Instead of settling for a different style, I asked Cherry what she can do at a certain price point. We talked it out, she came up with the results and we couldn’t be happier. So there you go, our wedding ring journey has ended, woot!

 

 

As a lover of all things sparkly and girly, working on the wedding bands, to me, is the most exciting part of prepping for the wedding. And because I’m a control freak, I pretty much took over the entire preparations, including where to get the wedding rings.

So, my engagement ring features two natural sapphires as an accent and I want my wedding ring to match this specific design. I also wanted to get the half eternity design because there is less risk of the precious stones being bonked when worn. Here is my preferred design:

I specifically want a very dainty, slim band because I am quite petite and my fingers are, well, petite too! I truly hate chunky rings with a passion because they tend to make the fingers look like swollen sausages. Also, when you wash your hands often, the extra skin chunky rings cover will look icky so no. As for the husband-to-be, he wanted a simple gold band, which did not surprise me at all. For a wink of sparkle, he wanted a teeny tiny diamond in the center.

Our first stop were the jewelry shops at, of course, my happy place Mega Mall. The selection was amazing and the pre-designed sets were surprisingly affordable. My only gripe is that customization costs more and the extra charge is a huge jump from the pre-designed sets. I was not really surprised at the atrocious prices but I kinda wished things were a lot simpler, hahaha!

After combing through shop after shop, we decided to go for an independent jeweler. Initially, I chose Angeli, a jeweler based in Marikina. We discussed everything from the price to the payment method via Viber and everything went smoothly. That is, until we headed to the city to make it to our appointment.

Pardon me but I’ll totally go ghetto from here:

I don’t like badmouthing people because I’m from a family of entrepreneurs and I know how hard it is to please customers but lawrd almighty that woman Angeli put us through shit. Just to clarify, we’re no longer based in the city so we had to travel for almost four hours to make the appointment.I had to wake up at the break of dawn just to make that goddamned trip. Although we needed to get other things done, our schedule in the city was planned around said appointment.

And just when we’re 20 minutes away from the city, the woman called to say she’ll have to bump our meeting at a later time (three to four hours later than the agreed time) because she’s “meeting with another client.”

First off, are we not your clients also? Didn’t we just agree to set the appointment to pay off all the rings we will buy from you? Couldn’t you at least lie to us instead of saying you’ll meet some other client at the last possible minute straight to our fucking faces? Is this the kind of shitty customer service your clients deserve? You don’t go around wasting people’s time like that! Seriously, I could go on and on. My fiance and I felt totally disrespected.

UPDATE: I’ll be posting this Viber image here to show that we reminded Angeli about the appointment a few days before the event. On her FB page, she’s insinuating that we did not confirm the appointment, along with a half-assed apology. Hilarious, way to do business guys! Put the blame on your customers who did not do anything wrong, great job!

Anyway, this setback dampened our already complicated plans so we literally spent the next 20 minutes of the trip making phone calls searching for other independent jewelers in the area. I was so pissed that I left a scathing review on her Facebook page to warn other customers.

In hindsight, I was glad the appointment got canceled otherwise we never would’ve discovered a better jewelry shop, Diamond Fire Manila. Moral of the story: always have a backup plan.

Cherry, whom I think is the owner of the cute little boutique store on Jupiter St. in Makati, personally assisted us in finding the right designs for the ring. It was hard explaining everything from scratch to Cherry because the deal with the other jeweler went shit but she listened as I discussed how I want the rings to look like, what stones to use, and so on. I also got to try different rings just to get a feel of the finished product. Check out the picks. WARNING: my unkempt cuticles may cause nightmares.

I can’t tell you how happy I was being surrounded by these beautiful sparkly rings, hahaha! Oh and no, those gorgeous diamond rings look nothing like my engagement ring, I will post my engagement ring once I receive the wedding band set sometime next month! I kenat wait homayghad!!!