engaged

Spring is finally here, I’ve survived my first winter for a few years, and things are going well. Really well. Eilidh and I just got back from a long weekend on the Isle of Arran, where we made the official announcement that we’re engaged to be married, hopefully in ~18 months time. We’ve been kind of secretly engaged for a month or two, but we were waiting for the ring to be finished before we made The Big Announcement…

Originally, we were going to get a classic solitare engagement ring. We saw a few we liked, but not anything we were sure was right for us. Fortunately, we eventually found out about a company called RingMaker.

They are based in Glasgow and Edinburgh (no website at the moment, so no link), and as well as having a range of contemporary jewelry, they can also make just about anything you want. With their help, we designed our own engagement ring and got it just how we wanted it.

Here’s a picture of some of our original designs. We drew these out before we went, and the design we liked the most turned out to be the first one we came up with. One important thing we learned while shopping for the solitare is that it’s important to consider how the ring will sit next to the wedding band, so there’s a picture of that too.

At RingMaker (in Glasgow) we met Joanne, who looked at our designs, talked to us about the options, and made some very accurate drawing of the ring designs so we could choose between them. She then ordered quite a few different stones for us to look at, and so the next time we went in we were able to choose the stones we wanted and draw out the final design (a teardrop aquamarine and a round diamond, set in platinum):

Then after a long and nervous wait, we we able to go to the newly-opened Edinburgh branch and pick up the finished ring. We had all sorts of worries running though our minds after having invested so much in a single drawing, but when we saw it we knew it was perfect. It was just how we’d imagined it, only shinier!

It was lovely to design the ring and choose the stones together, although it was a little frustrating waiting for the ring to be made before we could tell our family and friends! We’re really happy with the finished ring and with our newly-engaged status.

Take care, Andy and Eilidh x

p.s. The stones in the ring are actually our birthstones. This is only a coincidence! A couple of people have asked if the shapes and positions of the stones means anything in particular. Well, when we were designing the ring, we just went for what felt right. However, we think that the complementary asymmetry of the design describes us pretty well. It’s not about being the same, it’s about working well together.