Wise Guys: His wedding band {part 1 - the search}

I think it's fairly safe to say that most girls have spent some time thinking about their future engagement ring, and potentially their wedding band.  However, guys are not the same way.  Ant is not a jewelry guy.  He does not wear a ring or a chain or any other type of jewelry.  SO this wedding band will be his first venture into the world of bling.  When we started shopping for our wedding bands, we were starting at zero.  Which is why this post is going to take place in more than 1 part…it was quite the project.

We first had Ant try on the rings of a few married men in our lives…specifically his friend Jay's, and my dad's.  Jay had his band custom made, and it is beautiful - but too wide and too blingy for Ant. He put it on and I started to giggle.  When he tried my dad's very traditional gold band on - that didn't seem quite right either.  It was too thin and seemed too simple. Again - I had this uncontrollable urge to giggle while he was wearing it - I'm not used to his hand with a ring on it!  It was horribly immature and silly, but that's the way it goes.

These are NOT identical to Jay's and my father's…but give you the general idea.

We decided the best way to start was to just go try some on.  We went shopping for the first time with his mom, and I felt a little better when she giggled in a very similar fashion the first time he tried one on there:) …the poor guy.  At that store we were able to narrow down a few things: he needs a ring of "medium" width (that being a very unofficial, relative term)…to us that meant about 6mm.  Anything wider looked too big on his hand and anything smaller seemed too thin.  He liked rings that had an edge of some sort on it, without being too crazy of a design.  Dark metals did not look right, so we played with yellow gold and white gold/silver/chrome.  Below are a few of the styles he tried...

We didn't love any of them - but at least we got the ball rolling!  Ignore the craziness going on on my hand, the search for my band in an entirely different story.

We took a few weeks off from ring shopping.  When we decided to start again, we went to the store where Ant got my engagement ring.  The woman there was wonderful and helped us try on a number of other rings.  We were getting so much closer! We were able to narrow down a few more things: NOT yellow gold, and no diamonds (although Ant was still considering the idea of black diamonds - we decided no traditional diamonds).

This ring below was the closest to liking one we had gotten!  He liked the size and design in the middle - it was interesting but not too much.

On our way home from lunch with friends later that weekend, we stopped at yet another store.  Again - by now we had a much better idea of what we were looking for…so we were able to be very efficient.  Ant tried on these two rings - and decided that he liked the simple white gold with the lightly brushed inside and beveled outside more than the design of the one above.  He was definitely back to a "simple is better" mindset…but we weren't in any rush to buy so we took some pictures and banked the style as a front runner.

Since I'm sure you are now on the edge of your seat, I'm going to pause here.  If you are already married - did you find that ring shopping for your then fiancé/now husband was difficult?  Or was he easy to shop for?  Ant is not a super picky guy - so I think we were surprised by how difficult it was to actually find something we liked!!