Things You Should Know Thursdays – My “Wedding” Rings…

I have a confession: if you’ve seen me wearing my wedding ring within the past 5 years, you did not see my real wedding ring.

Matter of fact, you saw a Sterling Silver & Cubic Zirconia ring, which cost me a whopping $45 on Overstock.com. (The price has dropped since then, you can get it for a bargain price of $35 on Overstock now.)

When Mike & I got married, my wedding ring was a perfect fit, but too small if my fingers swelled at all. Then I gained 5-10 pounds, and it was really tight. Then I gained another 10 pounds thanks to medicine I was prescribed (ugh, that was a FUN time). I refused to resize my wedding ring though – I was going to lose the weight. I wore no ring for a year or two.

Then I started photographing weddings. When you first get engaged, you look at EVERYONE else’s ring. Everyone. Imagine meeting with a wedding photographer who wore no wedding ring while talking about her husband? It raised a few eyebrows. I didn’t want to resize my real rings though because I really, really was going to lose that weight. I’d make excuses at client meetings, but it always felt weird to not have a ring on.

I started looking at fake rings to act as a stand-in. I had a fancy $10 one from a local box store, until the metal wore off of it. I went to Overstock to start looking at Cubic Zirconia rings. I picked one out and ordered it, and just like that I had a “wedding” ring again.

The most awkward moment? When I told one of my brides, who I knew had a ring from Tiffany’s in New York – where he proposed to her on one knee and all, that her ring was STUNNING. He looked at me and said, “Yes, but it isn’t as nice as YOURS. Yours is so beautiful!”

I mean, what do you do? Admit to him that it is a $45 ring? No. I just graciously said thank you and moved the conversation to a new topic.

People comment on them all the time. Sometimes I tell them, other times I don’t. Like the hair stylist who told me she wished her husband would buy her a ring like mine? I told her to do what I did and go buy it herself!

Now I’ve lost the weight. My wedding rings fit. In the years that passed, I’ve learned about conflict diamonds, and about why diamonds are a sham — the whole “they are rare” thing is hyped up thanks to DeBeers, not reality.

My “real” wedding rings no longer feel like my rings.

I feel weird wearing my real rings. Especially because out of the 9+ years Mike & I have been married, I wore them for a year or two, but I wore my “fake” ring for over 5 years now. It is the ring I’m used to seeing on my hand, not the other one.

A ring is a ring. The marriage is what matters. I felt the need to come clean though and confess that you’ve likely never seen my “real” wedding ring. Maybe one of these days I’ll take it back out and start wearing it again. Or maybe for our 10th anniversary, I’ll ask Mike if we can make a pair of earrings and a pendant out of it. It is a shame for it to just be sitting in a box. For now, on the road? It is nice knowing that if I lose my rings, it isn’t really much of a loss at all. Now that I know that a new set would only be $35, I might order one in my new size – the current set is huge on me!

Things You Should Know Thursdays – #TYSKT – were inspired by a prompt on Vivid & Brave, a coaching program for creative women who blog.