Wedding Ring delimma

I'm having a little bit of a dilemma about my wedding ring. I'll need to give you a little background so that you can fully understand.

My engagement ring initially was set crooked. The stone was tilted and there were a number of delays resulting in Chris being unable to present the ring on my birthday, on this amazing hike we did (where he had the proposal all planned for), and a weekend where we planned to go out of town. We wrote a letter expressing our dissatisfaction, and our jeweler fixed the ring, gave us a coupon, our setting for 1/2 off, and generally worked really hard to make us happy. We felt happy to be working with them despite the glitch.

So, when we went back to get my wedding ring, we didn't hesitate to work with them. They offered to do a custom wedding band to match complete with matching pave diamonds. They took a mold of the engagement ring, and sent if off to be made.

We received the ring last week and it was... well, less than perfect. The milgrain was crooked and sharp in areas. It caught on my skin, cloth, and pretty much everything else near it. Some of the diamonds were set too deep and not symmetrically. It didn't sit flush to the engagement ring because it wasn't straight.

Now to be perfectly honest, it's a small 2 mm band... No one would even notice the multitude of imperfections. But I look at it and I'm just kind of "Grrr..."

I'm not mad at the jeweler, and we only paid $300 for a heavy platinum/diamond ring. But I'm having a hard time deciding whether to bring it up with the jeweler or let it go. What would you do?

The pictures I'm including aren't meant to be artistic, just to kind of show you the defects (as much as we could without a good macro lens). You have to click on the enlarged version to see any of the defects!

New E-ring pictures

I have been learning how to use our Nikon D80. I'm not very good at it yet, but trying not to get frustrated. Lighting is a huge issue with this lens. It is a non-automated old macro lens, so you can't use flash to augment the light. Here are a few attempts at some macro engagement ring pictures... Just in time... My wedding ring arrived yesterday. I'll blog about it tomorrow.

I took these photos on top of the scarf I knitted over Christmas (first knitting attempt ever), and on top of a really great bottle of wine.

Vases

I found some cool vases on Jamaligarden.com. They are affordable, sustainable and come in many different sizes and shapes. What do you think?

Invitation final image!

After much thought, we opted to combine the mountains and trees of the second image with the sky of the first image. We're completely thrilled with the outcome. I think it really makes the whole graphic pop!

Now we have to figure out how we're going to put it all together into an invitation suite. We went to Paper Source yesterday and scoped out #10 paper and envelopes. Did you know Stardream is 50% off right now? I have some ideas about what we might do, but I'm open to your thoughts as well!

I just went crazy for an Etsy store

New love courtesy of Jen!

Jen has been concerned about what I'm going to use to ward off the summer evening chill during the wedding reception. It is so fun to have her thinking about it and occasionally emailing me pictures of options she found. Boy, did she find the most awesome stuff today!

She just introduced me to an Etsy seller named Holly Stalder, and I've fallen in love.

Holly is totally vintage inspired. I'll share with you some of her dresses and shrugs. Enjoy! (and let me know which shrug you like best...)


She has some dresses that would be perfect for a rehearsal dinner or after party!




http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5097725

Surprise shower: or how I spent last weekend.

(Sorry Bean, didn't mean to leave you hanging, but I knew this was going to be a long post)

It was so amazing!!! These girls went so far over the top for me, that it humbles me.

Friday night I flew first class to San Francisco on Virgin Atlantic (how appropriate!). One of the girls had been tricking me for weeks about what was going to happen, so I thought I'd get her back by telling her I missed my flight. I felt a little bad, because she seriously got scared. I told her right away that I was just kidding... I had a few drinks on the plane, then was picked up by another friend at the airport.

She took me to the Park 55 Hotel in San Francisco, where we met a bunch of my friends... 29th floor suite. It was amazing. They had me change my clothes, and then we went to my coolest friend ever's cousin's restaurant. It was the most amazing Vietnamese fusion cuisine that I've ever had! At dinner, two other friends walked in and surprised me. They were girls that I wouldn't expect to have made it based on their schedules. One flew in from LA (taking time off during the Grammys, when she was supposed to be working), and another who I haven't seen in a long time. The champagne, wine and food were all flowing, and we stayed at the restaurant pretty late.

Then we walked down through the Castro and went to the Orbit Room (art deco decor fitting with the wedding vintage theme). There we had somedrinks, and we all recounted the stories of the various events that led up to Chris and I meeting and dating. They had to kick us out of the bar at closing because we were having so much fun!

The next morning, the plan was for us to have a bridal brunch with my family. We were running a little late, and so my mom, and sisters decided that they didn't want to come :( We opted to cancel that event, since all the girls were going to drive up with me to Tahoe to go snowboarding, anyway.

Once in Tahoe, we had dinner and made bingo cards to play Bar Bingo. We went out that night for our Bar Bingo game (so fun), and went home early to get some much needed sleep. I'll post more about Bar Bingo in a separate thread, because it was so fun that we are thinking of doing it every time we go out!

The next morning we had breakfast and went snowboarding. It was such a great day. There was really great snow in the trees, and it is always great to ride with the girls.

I surprised all the girls with a sushi dinner that night. (It was hard to trick them, but I gave the restaurant my credit card before everyone got there). During dinner, we all decided that this is so much fun that we're not waiting for bachelorette parties to hang out like this again.

We made a plan to reconvene at a concert (Bloc Party) in Seattle in April! I don't think I've ever had so much fun for a continuous 48 hours in my life... Seriously!

It's so great to have a group of friends where we have bonds that are as strong as a family! Huge shout-out to all the girls!

The weekend!