Day 138: How To Choose Wedding Bands (and WIN an Engagement Ring!)

It's been several days since my last post. Sorry to those (one or two) of you who have been awaiting my next move with bated breath!  Moving back to L.A. the day before I had to start teaching 2 lecture classes at UCLA was more than I bargained for!  Thanks for your patience while I await the return of my sanity and composure. :)

I do have some fun updates to add.  First, for those of you who don't know this, Michael and I have a pretty awesome engagement story.  We WON my engagement ring in the 2010 L.A. Diamond Dash, hosted by Sarah Leonard Jewelers in Westwood, CA.

HOW TO WIN AN ENGAGEMENT RING
It was a completely exhausting Amazing-Race-style scavenger hunt, that required both athleticism and brains.  Somehow Michael and I brought both to the table (usually we're a lot more "brainy" than athletic, but we can bring out the muscle when properly motivated!).  We prepared for the competition in true nerds style, by studying maps to memorize historical landmarks, programming code into a laptop which we carried around with us, and by upgrading Michael's ancient iPhone (so we could get the text-message clues ASAP).  Well... we beat out 165 other couples for the grand prize and - as promised under threat of violence - Michael proposed on the spot.  Here's the (mildly embarrassing) video:

As you can see, we were both pretty psyched. :)  Oh, right. Here's the ring:

I was never into "bling"... until now!

HOW TO PICK OUT WEDDING BANDS
That was 9 months ago, almost to the day.  On Monday of this week, Michael and I headed back to Sarah Leonard Jewelers (we are BIG fans of these folks, obviously) to pick out our wedding bands.  I have to say... this was the most fun I've had shopping for body décor since my no-mirrors project started!  Finally, I could actually see how things looked on my body (errr... I mean finger!).

(A side note here: I've always really liked my hands.  I have my mothers tiny fingernails, and my dad's pointing-inward index fingers.  Not terribly masculine, but not so girly-looking that I can't dive into a home-improvement project for fear of breaking a nail.  Yes, I like my hands.  And I've REALLY loved being able to look at them over the past 4 months... they've become my new vanity, and I'm 100% okay with that.  Using a ton of hand lotion and getting manicures every 3-4 weeks, and admiring my hands, feels a lot more sane than critically counting the blackheads on my nose with a magnifying mirror!)

This option was pretty, but I opted for a
completely plain wedding band instead.
It's less expensive, and appeals to my
minimalist aspirations.

Getting back to wedding-band shopping, things went really well.  Interestingly, our budgeting approach to wedding bands seems to be the opposite of normal: I opted for a cheapo plain palladium band, and Michael fell in love with a pricey piece of precious-metal samurai sword they call a "Mokume Gane" wedding band.  Seriously: "Mokume Gane" refers to a 17th century metalwork technique used to make Samurai swords (moku=wood, me=eye, and gane=metal).  Some artisan/marketing genius named Jim Binnion learned the technique, realized dudes would <3 getting a (literal) piece of the Samurai mystique, and is now making a killing on these things!

Beautiful ring, beautiful hand, beautiful person

Michael had an instant "MY PRECIOUS!" (in creepy Gollum voice) reaction to one ring.  He clearly preferred it over every other ring in the entire store, but seemed almost embarrassed to admit that this was the case.  The gender scholar in me couldn't help but wonder what was going on: was it the price (real-men-who-aren't-gangsta-rappers don't spend $$ on jewelry!), the fact that the ring would cost more than my wedding band (manly men don't wear more expensive wedding bands than their wives!), or simply the experience of wanting a piece of beautiful jewelry (only women lust after pretty jewelry!)?  Or, maybe this had nothing to do with gender norms, and everything to do with Michael being the kind of person who is more generous to others than he is to himself.  This last bit, I know is true.

And so I took it upon myself to convince him that it would be okay to spend a bit of $$ on something he'd be wearing every day for the rest of his life.  He didn't put up much of a fight.  We bought the ring.  He wore it for the rest of the afternoon, and then gave it back to me for safe-keeping until I put it on his finger again on October 1st.  I can hardly wait!

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