The Wedding Diaries

With Michelle Graff’s recent wedding blogging (see her 7/13 and
7/16 posts), I decided it was time for me to chip in. Last week, I joyfully tied
the knot. And as I went through the planning process over the better half of
the past 12 months, I often thought that the
way I came about my wedding jewelry might seem a bit add for someone who writes
about the industry, including this
confession: My engagement ring hails from cyberspace.

My husband, a programmer who writes code for an Internet
start-up, purchases anything and everything online. So while the proposal did
come as a surprise, his means of securing the ring was no shock. As a young
couple, price was of the utmost concern. And being that he is someone who lives
and breathes online, I know the hubby felt confident in his decision.

I adore my ring, and while I love to support local
retailers, I also can’t help but love that he chose a path that is so typically
him.

I’ve sat in on seminars where sales experts have explained
there is always going to be a set of consumers who will buy online, and for
the jeweler, it isn’t worth chasing them. The hubby definitely falls into that
category. What he missed by going online was a personal connection, but after
years of living with a jewelry editor, he’s become very familiar with my own
thoughts on heirlooms and the way I feel about memories being intertwined with
jewelry.

When it came time to look for a wedding band, guess where
the hubby turned? For my own, however, I went a different route. Friends asked
me why, with access to a bounty of designers, I didn’t ask someone to make
something for me (I did for the earrings and cocktail ring I wore on the big
day), yet I wanted to have that experience of going to a jewelry store and
working with a retailer. 

Typical of me and my powers of procrastination, just
two weeks before the wedding, I picked up a New York Weddings magazine, thumbed
through the jewelry listings and highlighted smaller independents that I
thought would specialize in what I was looking for—something priced at an
entry-level range and clearly handcrafted. I found exactly what I was looking
for at the store of a West Village jeweler. Not only did I