Ring a Ding Ding

I was out in Oxford with Mrs McW and we had been looking (you know, idly looking) at jewellers. Everything is so expensive. For example, even at a mid range high street jewellers you are looking at £1000 + for a teeny little solitaire. I am sure it’s a highly clear, carroted solitaire but it is teeny. Do they not know I have medium sized hands?

Here is a good example.

Now while I’m sure this is a stunning ring for a lot of you girls, I have always felt (and this is very personal I know) that platinum or white gold looks basically like silver, besides which I like gold, and I'm also not fond of solitaires. Which are everywhere.

There was some vague talk of using the gold from my Great Grandmother’s ring melted down and then buying the stones but honestly, neither BF or I were organised enough. I don’t think he wanted to over think the engagement to that extent either.

Also I was horrified when I did some digging to find out the ethical responsibility you take on when you buy newly mined diamonds.

The Kimberley process was set up to attempt to monitor the diamond trade in 2003 after noticing that the international diamond trade might just be fuelling human rights violations in a collection of African nations. Unfortunately, despite wide spread publicity, few retailers can guarantee their diamonds are conflict free. 

You can’t even prove that they ARE certified by the Kimberley Press according to Wikipedia:

“The Kimberley Process has ultimately failed to stem the flow of blood diamonds, leading key proponents such as Global Witness to abandon the scheme.[32] In addition, there is no guarantee that diamonds with a Kimberley Process Certification are in fact conflict free. This is due to the nature of the corrupt government officials in the leading diamond producing countries. It is common for these officials to be bribed with $50 to $100 a day in exchange for paperwork declaring that blood diamonds are Kimberley Process Certified”

Good god. Not only am I Bridechiller, now I am also an ethical bride! I have to be because what I’m reading here is pretty horrifying. ‘Blood Diamond’ was based on something apparently.

So not only do these rings you’re looking at cost about 8 times what they will be when your fella walks out of the shop with them (they’re apparently like a car – remove a wadge when you drive it off the show room) but they are also unethical purchases. What to do? 

Engagement rings were originally like collateral. The Romans would pledge rings to one another. If you were rich enough a ring was like a business pledge. 'I will legally tie myself to your daughter; here is something expensive which you can keep as a deposit until I do'. As an avid reader of Georgette Heyer I can also tell you, women can break off an engagement, men cannot. It's just not done, sir! Would the lady keep the ring if she did break it off? Well, if that ring (never diamond by the way) had been 200 years old and in the family as the heir's pledge ring to his future wife? Maybe not. Would you keep your engagement ring if your fiance jilted you? Heck yes. I can imagine the law suits. You can see why ladies were expected to break it off; you'd hardly keep the ring if you made the decision to end it.

Engagement rings became aped by the middle classes in turn. When diamond mines were discovered in parts of Africa and Asia in the late 19th Century, diamonds became a plentiful stone. The aspiring middle classes were the perfect market to flog the sparkly little gems to, especially when they could be pimped up with a smaller but more expensive sapphire or ruby. It's Frances Gerety, an advertising copywriter, who coined the genius slogan 'Diamonds are Forever' in 1947. The rise in pre-marital sex in the 1940's corresponded to a surge in engagement rings. After all, if a ring is a pledge of marriage, why wouldn't you? Diamonds are a girl's best friend and you should always get that ring before you open your legs.... crude but effective. 

 Do you even need to have a diamond? My best friend T has as beautiful sapphire and diamond vintage art deco ring. Mrs McW herself has a custom made sapphire engagement ring which she wears as a combination engagement and wedding ring. Hatton Gardens, the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham and the Lanes in Brighton are all excellent places to go second hand ring shopping.

In the end I saw it in a gallery shop where I live and Mrs McW took BF down the very next day and he bought it.

I think this was a relief for us both. We have just cleared off our debt and there we were considering putting it on a credit card. Which is stupid.

Now I have a wonderful, turn of the century ring in gold. 

And the even better thing other than having a beautiful, individual, ethical (so far as I can tell) and vintage ring which BF made sure fitted by taking one of my old rings with him to have it resized? Looking on Ebay to find one exactly the same being sold for a lot more in America. Result.

Thanks to Shanon Rupp for her amazing article here on how unromantic engagement rings are!

Bridezilla and how she exists in the first place

BF proposed mariage to me a few days ago. This is highly exciting. 

I could never envisage how he would have done it. BF down on one knee doesn’t seem right somehow. Then on a non descript Thursday, about to go to bed (and after some searching questions about whether he was planning to propose at our cancelled dinner that night) he turned around to me while I was reading and asked “Will you Marry Me’. And I said yes. He put the ring on my finger, we both had a cry and then spent the next fifteen minutes feeling a bit amazed, excited and….well, a bit funny.

This isn't even an unusual proposal. I helped my brother when he proposed to my sister-in-law by driving from Kent to Somerset with a bottle of champagne and a bunch of sunflowers, following them in a trench coat and trilby (I was a bit dramatic at the time) up a long, steep hill then hiding it all in a prominent spot. My sister-in-law saw my brother make a bee-line for the flowers and told him he shouldn't go over there as obviously someone had died on that spot. I was sitting down the hill meanwhile chatting to a couple who were having an affair and meeting secretly. I wonder what happened to them…

Unusual proposals include dressing your newborn in a onesie reading ‘Will You Marry my Daddy?’, carving ‘Will you Marry me’ in a Pumpkin (in BF’s handwriting this would not work), recording ‘Will you Marry me’ in a Build a Bear, shouting it out while sky diving, spelling it out in shells when on a helicopter ride….my god the list is endless. My recently friend actually asked her intended, ‘What are you doing down there you dick head’ before she realized he was proposing.

Women can ask men to marry them, traditionally however this was only meant to happen on a leap year as anyone who lost 90 minutes of their life watching the film ‘Leap Year’ will know.

Debretts (who have a whole website devoted to etiquette when it comes to exchanging vows) state that the “location should be memorable and the timing should be carefully thought through…remember there can be no truly offensive way to ask someone to marry you.”

Oh contraire.  

No-one can doubt that BF are a great couple – of course we have our bickering fits and sometimes I want to kill him. But then we also have moments when we get so overwhelmed with love, we have a little cry. So, it’s not like I am one of those women who expect the wedding without the groom. But it had hit us that we were ENGAGED. Actually, properly engaged. To be married. Going from talking about it to doing it was actually terrifying. We were going to actually plan a wedding.

I never thought I'd get married at all so planning a wedding came as something of a shock.

I was twenty nine when I met BF. It was at our mutual best friend’s wedding. I was a bridesmaid, he was an usher. I had brought another date and then caught the bouquet and wound up snogging both of them on the beach before going back to my room with the date. Luckily BF is very open-minded and didn’t think it horrendously forward when I Facebooked him a week later and the rest is history. I never had proper boyfriends before BF. Lots of ‘nearly boyfriends’ and dates, but nothing that lasted past five months.

I have been a bridesmaid seven times (this was Bridesmaid Wedding No seven). Seven different dresses worn, five hen do’s organised, two speeches given and more champagne than I know what to do with has passed through my urinary tract. So I know weddings. Oh yes. I have had the brides ring me up and screech (and screeched back, mainly truthfully) when they got engaged. I doted over the ring. I have even pretended on a few occasions that I liked the groom (mercifully on retrospect this has not happened when I have been a bridesmaid). I have been happy for a lot of people, which is not quite the same thing as being happy for yourself.

Actually there are a lot of pro’s about being single. Being single is fun. But weddings while single? Don’t even get me started on the whole ‘plus one’ thing (finding one or being told you can’t have one). And having to find the money to get to places, to stay in the hotels, afford a present, afford the HEN DO, let alone the wedding itself….. I used to dread the inevitable ‘four a year’ invites arriving (while being very happy for friends FYI in case I sound really ungrateful). It did not help that at the time I was an aspiring artist and couldn’t afford a new pair of jeans. Let alone two nights in a boutique B&B with sea views and shoes in a specific colour requested by a tired, overwrought bride who is trying to organize her big day while holding down a full time job AND keeping her mother –in-law happy.

You can see why I am feeling a bit funny. Suddenly I have gone from badgering him (and boy, did I badger BF. I am amazed the man has been as patient as he has - I have nicknamed it 'Miss Piggying' after the recent Muppets movie) to having a wonderful ring on my finger. I have fallen in love with diamonds – driving home I get lost in their clear, watery glimmer – never wise on the A34. I am also planning the most political, expensive and potentially offensive event of my life to plan. And now I know. It is as if the scales have fallen from my eyes.

This is why those women went mad! This is why they got that weird glint in their eyes when we went dress shopping! This was why they sounded stressed when I got pissy about the £300 hen do and having to buy a new pair of shoes, and when I was horrifically moody about what monstrous frock they were planning to stuff me in. Holy shoot, now I can see how Bridezilla is made!

She starts out feeling excited and full of good hope in the begin. But bit by bit, she is ground down. She has a full time job, potentially a man who cares too little/much/won’t support her ideas for a twenty foot ice sculpture of the two of them etc. and she starts to fold under the pressure. Bit by bit this sane, calm woman begin to fall away like the outside of a melted Easter Egg. And from the wreckage of her inner peace comes the ‘Zilla. Monstrous to all around her. Maybe even to herself. But driven to do one thing and one thing only. HAVE THE BEST AND MOST WONDERFUL DAY OF HER, I MEAN THEIR, LIFE!!!!!! (count the frenetic exclamation marks there – they are there on purpose my friend). And everything has to be perfect. Everything. Down to the last hair, the last favour, the last flower.

I am here to help myself and you through this tangled, woven path. I don't believe in the art of Zen wedding. I don't think it's a real thing. I think the arguments, the tantrums, the fights and the stress is all part of the wonderful human package you get when you through many different personalities, numerous bank balances, several opinions on what makes a 'good wedding' and the expectations of most of your friends and family.

So here I stand on the brink of planning my wedding. I am scared, I am nervous and I am excited! Most of all though, I am terrified.