May I please have the rings?

When our officiant said these words I had no idea that just moments before my sister did not have the ring. Matt's dad was carrying my rings and my sister was in charge of Matt's ring for me. Apparently just moments before the rings were needed my sister had to run back to her purse and get the ring which was about 25 feet away causing my mom to nearly have a panic attack wondering what in the world was wrong.


One would think that with only 9 people in attendence at our little ceremony I would have noticed one of the guests running off. But my sister said I was to busy staring into Matt's eyes to notice anything.


We didn't notice a thing, only each other. The rings were there, we delivered our vows, and YEAH we were married!!! The vows we selected were a combination of several different traditional ceremonies. We selected words that would emphasize our equal partnership as best friends.


And of course we sealed it with a kiss. This photo isn't our first kiss but I got carried away in photoshop again and wanted to share.


Photos from David Sunfellow Photography.

Ring Bowl Love

One of the best finds I have found in the wedding blog world was the discovery of Paloma's Nest Ring Bowls via Etsy. I have seen them featured on nearly all of my favorite wedding blogs at least once so I knew that I had to have one as a wedding present to myself.

We didn't have it done to carry our rings for our ceremony but do think that it would have been a cute idea. Instead we both plan on using it to hold our rings on the nightstand.

I would recommend a ring bowl to anyone. It also comes with the beautiful packaging. I love the simplicity!

Something Old...

My "something old" is my engagement ring. It is a vintage ring from the 1920's.


One of my favorite engagement photos.

What are you wearing as your "something old"?

Cool Find of the Week

We have been looking for a wedding band to go with my vintage e-ring and came across this:

Photo from here.

A little, um how do I say - bold for me. But would be fun since we have started speaking Spanish to each other since getting engaged in Mexico. Although I think I would regret this immensely later.

Anyone have "unconventional" wedding rings?

More E-Ring Photos... But Better

I am very thankful to Sabrina from The Introverted Wife for using her awesome Photoshop skills to clean up our e-ring photos. You can see all of here work here. She is also looking to work her magic on some other ring photos. If anyone has some you should check out her blog.

The left is my original pic and the right is cleaned up.

click to enlarge.

One of my M&M pics was featured on the Weddingbee blog. They had been doing some really great tutorials and features of ring shots over the past month. Some additional great inspiration.

More E-Ring Photos

Inspired by the recent tweaking of the Relentless Bride's e-ring photos by the Introverted Wife, and all of the e-ring posts on Wedding Bee I decided to take a shoot at some artsy pics of our rings.

The top photos are my ring in our agave favors and centerpieces. And of course since we are M&M we have to get a few shots of our rings with them. I think I will put both of these types of pics on our list for the photographer. I will leave it to the pros.


Thanks to everyone for the reassurance about my dress saga. Meeting with a seamstress later this week. On a more positive note, we met with the venue and caterer to finalize the menu, centerpieces and linens yesterday. The price was $400 less than our initial quote. How often does that happen?

Project Reuse Ex. 4: E-Ring, Part II

First off I should apologize for being a Debbie Downer with my post yesterday about the high environmental and social cost of gold. This blog is intended to be inspirational and fun and not scolding people and showcasing my own guilt for desiring gold and diamonds. Hopefully these few posts can be inspirational for others to choose more ethical jewelry options.

Anyway as promised here is a photo of my e-ring. I absolutely love it! It is an antique from the 1920s in the Art Deco style. I really wanted an antique ring because I am an archaeologist and love old things and also because I have romantic dreams of having a vintage ring passed down in our family some day. Although it will have to be after I am gone because I am not taking this one off.
I also really wanted an antique ring because it is the ultimate in reuse and recycling. Matt purchased the ring himself after I showed him a few pics of what I liked. I am a simple girl so I wanted a simple ring - but something with a little pizazz (i.e. the filigree visible in the ring profile) but not too much. I wanted something that looked like an e-ring but didn't have a huge honkin' solitaire. He wanted to replace the diamond and purchased an Arkansas diamond because in addition to recycling the gold we wanted a conflict free stone.

With every choice there are tradeoffs, pros and cons. So hopefully our ring choice is a more sustainable option than a new purchase and we have done a little more to make our wedding a little greener.

This is also my 100th post. I think it is very fitting that it is about my engagemnet ring, it is what started our wedding process and hence this blog. Today also happens to be the anniversary of our 1st date. Aah, how momentous.

Project Reuse: Ex. 4 The E-Ring, Part I

For most couples I imagine one of the biggest expenses are the engagement and wedding rings. What couples may not think about is that their rings may also be a huge environmental expense. I am returning to the Project Reuse posts this week to highlight another way we are trying to make our wedding environmentally friendly. I heard and interesting podcast about the high environmental and social cost of gold mining which reminded me of another reason why I love my e-ring. My ring is an antique and fits our REDUCE, REUSE, and RECYCLE wedding mentality.The podcast was from Fresh Air on NPR featuring the author and photographer of the most recent National Geographic cover story about the real price of GOLD. When discussing wedding jewelry it seems that diamonds get all of the attention - both as the shinny stars of the rings as as the culprits of many of the social and environmental problems of the jewelry industry.

I taught a class last year in which the students had to document the total environmental and social impact of an everyday item. One of the students turned in an essay about her e-ring and was quite proud that they choose a conflict-free diamond. A wise choice for sure but when I asked her wear the gold for the ring came from and if she considered the impact of this in her purchase. I could see her heart sank as she admitted she had not and in her research for the paper discovered all sorts of reasons why gold mining can also be just as destructive. Wedding resources have all sorts of info about conflict free and eco friendly diamonds, but there is less awareness about the high environmental, social, and health costs of gold.

Photo from National Geographic.

That is why I thought the National Geographic piece was so interesting and had to share. I won't go into the details other than to post this from Brook Larmer's article:

" Rough hands attend to the delicate work of pressing excess mercury from gold extracted at an illegal mining operation in Kalimantan, Indonesia. A vast amount of mercury—at least 30 percent of the world total—is used by small-scale miners to process gold. When handled without safety equipment, the toxic metal can be absorbed into the bloodstream or lungs, causing serious damage. Tests performed by the Global Mercury Project, an initiative of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and the Global Environment Facility, revealed that mercury levels in the bodies of miners in parts of Indonesia are several hundred times higher than is generally considered safe."

So, what are we supposed to do? Diamond mining supports war and civil unrest, gold strips open earth and causes horrible health problems. Workers in these industries are often make pennies a day while the fat cats get rich.

We thought long and hard about weather or not to even go the traditional diamond e-ring route given our desire to avoid supporting such practices. Perhaps a glass ring? or not even a ring at all - possibly a necklace... Argh, still jewelry with precious metal and stone = still same problems.

Ring from Etsy seller

I think it must be something so ingrained in our American culture that I couldn't do anything too non-traditional. (Although I commend any couples out there who do! Kuddos!). I won't geek out and explain the Anthropological theories that explain this type of prestige economic institutions and just end it here.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to be environmentally and socially conscious with their wedding rings? Tomorrow I will share more about what we did...

Cool Find of the Week

So I have known about longed for the adorable ring bowls from Paloma's Nest. I just love the simple, elegant look and think they would make an excellent wedding keepsake.

Well today while browsing through the site and noticed all sorts of new goodies - and just in time for Valentines Day.

click to enlarge photos

I love the milagro heart seen in the "Treasure" bag and ceramic designs above. And the new natural wood designs. Cool indeed.

One Year Ago Today...

... Matt and I got engaged. Okay, it was actually 364 days ago. I am posting early because Matt and I are headed up to Zuni, NM early in the morning to purchase his wedding band. Matt does archaeology in the Zuni area and they make amazingly beautiful silver jewelry. A Zuni ring is what we want for him as it holds alot of symbology for us. He was actually living there for a semester last year before we took our trip to Mexico (what turned out to be our engagement trip) and was sort of the reason this post is not called One and a half years ago today...

Matt asked me to marry him on the last night of our 3 week Christmas trip to Mexico. We were in Parque Mexico in Mexico City and it couldn't of been more perfect. Matt had purchased my ring about 5 months earlier. I couldn't believe he could wait so long!! But in hindsight I am glad he waited. I was studying for my comprehensive exams (i.e. extreamly stressed and crabby) and then he temporarily moved to New Mexico and decided to wait for our big trip. My ring is an antique from the 1920's and I absolutely love it!

I won't divulge any of the cheesy details of the actual proposal but will share a funny part of the evening. As soon as we left our park bench a stray dog came over and peed right on it. I hope that isn't symbolic of anything to come...