The Wedding Ring Story: In Three Parts

The Wedding Ring Story: Lessons Learned Part I

What can you learn about yourself, God and your marriage from hunting for Wedding Rings?

I believe that you can learn many things. Values, Priorities, a deeper meaning and understanding of marriage.

Over the next couple days I want to tell you the story of how my Beautiful Wife and I came to have our wedding rings. We love telling the story.

It reminds us not only of our beginnings together, but also of how big God is.

Wedding Bells are “Ring-ing”

My soon to be Beautiful Wife (soon to be wife, not soon to be beautiful – she was already beautiful) and I had moved to New Orleans. We were gearing up to get married.

One of the many items on our list were our wedding rings. We really didn’t know what we were looking for, but being fans of Dave Ramsey and his principles, we knew that we didn’t want to go over board with the price. We wanted to get something nice, but not go in debt.

The First Ring a Ding Ding

One Saturday afternoon, we drove east, over to Foley Alabama, to visit an Outlet Mall mainly to kill some time. Lucky for us, they also had a jewelry store where the Future Beautiful Wife found a ring that she really liked.

It was one of those big jobbies where there were 4 little stones that they put together to make it look like a huge rock.

It looked really nice, would have been great on her finger, but we decided we weren’t ready to buy anything just yet, being so far away from the wedding date. Also, after looking at the price, we realized it was out of our league. Like way out of our league. We would have been paying for years on the thing.

Time continued to pass, and as it did, God was really working on my Wife.

The Simple Second Ring

She felt really convicted about spending SO MUCH CASH on a ring. Let alone any cash at all.

She said:

‘I really don’t want to look down at my finger every day and feel a pit in my stomach because of how much debt we now have because of my ring.’

Every so often the conversation would come up, we would talk rings, talk about the ring we saw at the Outlet Store, but this debt thought wouldn’t leave her mind.

We visited a couple jewelry shops in New Orleans, and I actually found a ring that I liked for my wedding band at this local jeweler that was right around the corner from our house (not suprising being that so much in New Orleans is so close together). She even found a ring that she thought she might like, and the nice lady behind the counter wrote down the shape of the stone she liked too. Once again though, the price was out of our budget.

We kept looking.

We were paying for our wedding ourselves and had many things to prepare and plan to get all our ducks in a row for the big day.

We rented a Castle. (Really, a castle just north of New Orleans that a man had built for he and his wife that they now do marriages in. The Louisiana Castle )

We had to find a baker for the cakes. We had a VERY cool castle wedding cake. And my grooms cake was a SWEET boom box. (Appropriate enough. I was an Air personality at the time)

Our invitations were made, we sent them out, we were figuring out how we were going to entertain all of these people coming to town before our marriage. (Go figure. We get married in New Orleans and EVERYONE wants to come. Wonder why?)

During this process, we kind of let the whole ring thing take a back seat.

Finally, we decided that we would just buy simple 20 dollar bands for each other.

As we talked about it, and my future wife wrestled with God about it, she really came out thinking that our rings were symbolic of our love for one another, not pieces of flair that we would flaunt in front of our friends showing them “how big the rock” is.

I really agreed with her. Why did we need anything so spectacular right now to get started in our union? We didn’t need to go in debt starting out, and we could always trade up in the future.

We had made our decision.

So we thought…

The Wedding Ring Story: Lessons Learned Part II

Meanwhile, At Work…

I was working afternoons on a radio station in town. I had talked with many of our Salesguys and gals about my upcoming marriage.

I had said:

‘Hey, since I am getting married, if you have a client that advertises wedding type things, I would be glad to do “live commercials” for them for trade.’ (One of the cool perks of being in radio: sometimes, the talent gets to enjoy the product of the advertiser. At a previous station, I actually got to drive 3 or 4 different models of Saturn cars because an advertiser wanted me to have the “Saturn Experience” so I could talk well about his business on the air)

I mentioned wedding boutiques, caterers, jewelers, cake decorators and any other advertisers that I could think of to inspire some of the sales team.

Nothing.

You would have thought that I was talking in a foreign language.

Months Go By

My Future Beautiful Wife and I are in the final 4 weeks before our wedding day. We have made the decision to buy simple wedding bands for each other because we don’t want to go in debt, and feel horrible every time we look at our ring fingers. But we have yet to go purchase the rings.

Since they were going to be simple bands, we decided to put off buying them til the week of our wedding.

I get a call.

Salesguy says: Hey, there is a local jeweler who might want to do some live advertising. You’re still getting married right?

Me: Uhh, yeah. (So nice that we had such a close relationship that he didn’t know. Oh well)

Salesguy: Mr. Owner at the Jewelry Shop wants to meet with me and you to see if we can set something up. Maybe live commercials. You busy next Thursday before you go on the air?

Me: Uhh, Nope.

Salesguy: Ok, I’ll set it up.

I told the Future Beautiful Wife of my conversation with Salesguy.

Some of our conversation sounded like this:

Me: Ok. Lets not get too excited here. I have to meet with him, he has to like me, we have to make sure that we get a good deal somewhere. If I still have to pay tons of dollars on rings, this might not be the way to go.

My Future Beautiful Wife added: Plus, we might not be here in two years. If you have to do live commercials until you die to pay these things off, that wouldn’t be wise either. (people in radio move around alot)

We decided together: We’ll see what God does.

Jump to Day Of The Meeting

I jump in the car and drive right around the corner to the local jeweler. (I forgot to mention it was the jeweler right around the corner from our house – coincidence? You decide).

I meet Mr. Owner. He shows me around his show room, we start talking about live commercials for the shop, and talking about my upcoming wedding.

Mr. Owner: Why don’t you call your fiancé and get her over here so we can pick out a ring for her.

Me: Ok, I’ll give her a call.

I step away from the office and dial sporadically.

Me: Hi honey, would come come around the corner to the Jeweler, we are going to pick out a ring for you.

Future Beautiful Wife: How’s it going-Do you feel good about this-Are you sure-Is everything ok-Are we going to go in to huge debt-What’s happening-Should I come over there-Right Now-I’m confused about what’s going on-Are you going to tell me-I am not sure about this!!!??????!!!???!!?!?!??!

Me: Calm down…Everything is going to work out. I feel good about what is happening here.

Future Beautiful Wife: Ok. Are you sure-Are you going to tell me more about the meeting-You need to tell me more details-What am I walking into over there???!!!?!!

Me: Come over here… Everything will be ok.

Mr. Owner explained how they picked diamonds, and how he traveled to get them and bring them back to his local jewelry shop.

I had explained that we had come by months before and that my soon to be wife may have even been on file for a ring she liked.

He looked it up, and by the time she arrived, the ring she liked was prominently displayed on his desk.

(I don’t know about you, but when I see a bag full of diamonds poured out in front of me, I get a lump in my throat.)

He explained color and size and shape of diamonds and what would be best for the ring she had chosen.

We even picked a wedding band that matched her wedding ring.

We left the jeweler that day. Stunned.

A Total of Three Rings

Mine, Hers, and her wedding band.

Her rings: Much prettier than the original ring, much more than just a band. The diamond was beautiful, and larger in size than the first ring we had looked at. Plus, the matching band was beautiful too.

My ring: The only one that I had liked during our several months of searching.

To be ready for pickup: The day before our wedding.

Live commercials on air for five days a week. One year. No Physical dollars came from my pockets for our rings.

Ever.

In my next post, I’ll talk about some of the things we learned in this whole ‘Wedding Ring’ Process!

If you have a great wedding story…Please share!!

The Wedding Ring Story: Lessons Learned Part III

It is Interesting How God Works

Its always fun to tell our Wedding Ring story, because we see God in it so much.

Here is a quick list of five things that we really learned from our experience:

1. We wanted to be good stewards of what we had.

We didn’t want to go in debt. We were certain of that. We went back and forth, expensive rings, not expensive rings? Showy, Not showy? Finally we decided on simple bands, and to trade up later in our marriage. We both were comfortable and happy with that decision.

God honored that decision in a big way. He gave us so much more that we could have ever expected.

2. We figured out that our marriage was about much more than the rings.

We didn’t need them to show off to our friends, we wanted real symbols of our marriage. That was much more important than big rocks and debt up to our eyeballs.

They were symbols of our love, of our relationship, our commitment to each other. Sure, we would have loved to be able to afford much more, but we just couldn’t at the time.

We were set on simple rings to show our love to one another. But God had so much more in mind.

3. When our hearts were right, God really showed up.

I did one year of live commercials on the radio for our friends at the Jewelry Shop. In return for my 5 minutes a week of talking about the jeweler on the air, we got so much more than we EVER thought we could get.

We have NO payments on our rings. They are beautiful pieces. We ended up with 3 rings for the mere investment of my time.

(It is interesting that we left New Orleans very shortly after the contract with the Jeweler ran out. Which leads to…)

4. It was all God’s Timing.

Yeah, He waited until just about a month before we got married to show us how He moves.

I believe that if we had gotten the rings any earlier in the process, we would have taken them for granted, and not seen God in it at all.

Because of the delay, because of what he was doing in our hearts, and because of how it all came together, God gets all the credit.

The Beautiful Wife and I just aren’t that good.

5. We had to go thru the process.

There is no way that we would have learned so much about God, about our future marriage, or about what it meant to both of us if He would have just given us the rings early in the process.

He was growing us, helping us form our values, what we really believed about our finances, and what we believed about our marriage.

Even before we were married, God was showing us that it was so much more than just a shallow superficial put on. Marriage is about so much more than a ring that you can flash at a coworker to make them jealous.

6. God Really has our best interests in mind.

How often I think that God just wants to get me, that He has it in for me, or wants to scold me or smite me. (Smite me Oh Mighty Smiter! -Thanks Jim Carrey )

God cares about me and I forget that easily. Yes. There is always a process, and how he gets me from point A to point B is never how I would have gotten there (9 times out of 10).

His ways always involve me growing and appreciating Him more. Plus, learning about myself and my relationships (and in this case my marriage).

Do you have a cool Wedding Story? Would you like to share? leave a comment below!

Photo courtesy Eduardo Deboni