Runners up

Hehe. Someone needed some lotion... ;)

Rings and things

Doesn't it look like he's about to punch you?...

So we had a very productive day today.  We met with Father Joven at 10 to basically turn in the paperwork for the wedding.  The church will be $600, music etc will be extra, and I guess I'll take that up with Grace.

Then we went to the MoVal house to work in the front yard.

Then back to wedding things, we headed to the mall for more ring shopping.  Yesterday we went to Victoria Gardens: Ben Bridge, Zales, Helzberg, and Kay.  We found that he likes two tone rings, it didn't really matter the metal.  It was more about what was aesthetically appealing to him.  He liked the pin stripes in some rings.  He disliked thick bands, bands that were too plain, bands that were too shiny.  

Armed with some prices, we continued shopping today, and happened upon a Daniel's jewelry store.  There we found the ring in the picture above.  It was completely different in style and color from the rings we had been looking at before. We hadn't really seen any dark/black colored rings and the stripes on the rings had mostly been inlays, rather than grooves.  But it was a striking ring, and we did ended up ordering it.  (Though there was a moment at another jewelry store where the guy told us if we paid cash we could get a tungsten ring we were looking at for $100...which he tried to sell also by saying for that price we could come back and get another one anytime... which totally did NOT sell it for me, as I would prefer that if we're buying a wedding ring it's a forever thing!)  The sales lady who helped us was a nice Filipino lady who also threw in a pair of cubic zirconium heart studs, a $50 gift certificate redeemable at the same jewelry store, and a cranberry scented candle.

We finished off the shopping trip with a trip to Chik-fil-a with a buy one entree get one free.

All in all, a productive day. ;)

Ring around the rosy...

White gold, tungsten, titanium, stainless steel.
Comfort fit, brushed, matte, antiqued.
Hezelberg's, Zales, Daniel's, Kay's.

So many choices...
that after a while all look the same...
Good thing that it's Eddie looking, not me. :)

When we were at Jared's yesterday, he did find a ring that he liked... 14K white gold, grooved, and brushed something or other...



Today, a ring with pinstripes caught his eye...Eddie and his pinstripes...

He was also finding out more about the Tungsten and Titanium rings. He likes the color, but not the fact that you can't resize the ring. Tungsten and Titanium are also supposed to be super durable. One woman at Kay suggested that he buys two rings..one for formal wear and one for everyday wear.

Still no luck finding a wedding band that fits with my ring...so my options are 1) go without a wedding band and have the engagement ring serve both purposes or 2) custom made to fit my ring.

Talking about where we are with our wedding plans:

Photographer: www.triversityweddings.com Eddie's mom's coworker's husband (twice removed once replaced yadda yadda yadda ... ;) ) does photography. His starting price is $1000 for a full album, but we have yet to call for updated prices. We get all the photos on a CD and the price also includes engagement pictures. He works with a videographer who charges $500. I've looked at his website and his pictures look okay. I like his engagement pictures more than the wedding ones though.

Flowers: Eddie's friend Jeff's mom's company, a florist recommended to Eddie's mom, my friend's sister-in-law, flowers from LA....

DJ: Eddie's brother's friend is charging us $50.

Invitations: Make our own. Here's what I had in mind...

Favors: Back to the family theme...I was thinking we'd do cookies. Pineapple tarts for me, and the sugar cookies Eddie's grandmother used to make for them at Christmas.

Etiwanda Gardens in Pink, Loose Stones, and Logan in the Hole

We visited Etiwanda Gardens to see it set up for a quincinera -which is only differs from a wedding setup (according to Eddie) by having less flowers. Apparently Eddie just has to see things set up for him to get the picture. I'm buying him a bride magazine to peruse... They had pink table toppers with matching chair ribbons. From the ceiling hung strands of lights and some translucent floaty looking material...tulle? We took pix I'll post them later. I wounder if I could work lanterns into the decorations...I've always liked the way they look. I need to find a book of flower arrangements to see how easy or difficult it would be to design my own... And speaking to Rita on the way to the beach gave me hope of affordable flowers.

Follwing the Gardens, we headed to Jared's to look at wedding bands. If you ever have to go to Jared's with a kid, the playroom they have is fully stocked. TV/DVD, additional TV for game system, toy box of various vehicles, a climbing tower, coloring books! I probably had as much fun as Logan.

Eddie looked at some bands; he found that he liked the Tungsten bands, the darker color seemingly more manly. We looked at some rings for me... Because my center stone sticks out, none of the rings fit flush against it... Which means either we do a custom ring or I stick with the engagement ring as a wedding ring, which would actually be fine with me!

While we were at Jared's we thought we might as well have my ring cleaned. And good thing we did! Two of the diamonds in my ring were loose! The center stone and one of the side diamonds...eep. It's been all of two weeks! This ring is much too high maintenance for me!