Bling Rings: Part 1

Yesterday Cara and I finished a task that took longer then it should have. We ordered our wedding bands. It took almost two whole weeks to order them, not for a lack of trying, but because the designer I went with for Cara's engagement ring does not have a vast amount of jewelers in the area carry the brand.

But let's back track some before all I talk about is Cara's ring and the journey to purchase the band.

I am an interesting breed of man when it comes to the ring I want. I really like a classic and stylish look. Case in point, my ultimate wedding tuxedo would be the Cary Grant Tuxedo from Hugo Boss. But that is another story all together.

Classic, to me, is what I am going to call "silver." There are many ways to better call that metal: white gold, palladium, not-yellow. You get the point. But I call them all "silver."

So I wanted a silver band. And a few months after we became engaged we strolled around to a few jewelers to try on men's wedding bands. I quickly locked in on the Scott Kay Collection. It was classic, it felt comfortable on my hand and it would look good with me dressed up or dressed down.

Fast-forward almost a year later. Wedding plans are in high gear. The concept of having a heavy dose of valium administered to me for the week leading up to the wedding is gaining more steam. Item's have started to be grabbed up on our gift registry in preparation for upcoming showers and the big day.

And now, in the midst of it all, it is time to get our wedding-band-groove-buying-style-of-dance and weekend activities on.

I was up first. The lead-off hitter. First to bat. The over-developed freshmen girl who gets asked to prom before the senior girls. The guy who has to get in the pool first and tell his friends what the water feels like. The... ok, you get the picture.

I knew that I wanted the Scott Kay Collection ring, but we (obviously) were going to get to a store and have me try it on again before any financial commitments were going to be made.

The great news is that there is a Jared's Jewelers (he went to Jared's!) just under five minutes from our place. This is one of the only jeweler's around that carry the ring I wanted. So we stopped in one fine day and found out that this particular Jared's did not carry the ring nor the brand.

So we had to trek down route 59 in Aurora/Naperville. If you are not familiar with route 59 in Aurora/Naperville, let me quickly give you the info:

1. every store you need to get to
2. everyone trying to get there at the same time
3. did i mention this is all just one road

Basically, it is just really boring to drive down because it is just one long road and it can sometimes be frustrating because it can cluster up real fast.

Lucky us, our adventure on it wasn't that bad. We got to the Jared's on route 59 and I went in, tried on the ring, had a few minutes of thinking and then we made the purchase. It will arrive sometime next week, fresh from the designer.

I put that last part in bold to give you a comparative approach when I have finished telling the story of how involved a process it was to get Cara's wedding band ordered.

It is so much of a process that I honestly don't have the effort to detail it all right now. I started to, but I just can't. I need coffee and some finger stretches before I tackle it. So I am breaking this post into two seperate ones.

Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion to our story as I'll later present to you,

"Bling Rings: Part 2 - The Search for Curlie's Gold"

or, if you don't like that...

"2 Fast 2 Blingious"

"Bling 2: Collector's Fee"

"The Bling Files: I Want to Bling"

Legally Blinged"

"Illinois Smith and the Kingdom Of The Bling Skull"

"Bling Hard"

Superbling IV: The Quest for More Bling"