The Perfect Trio

I shared awhile back the story of where Mr. S bought my engagement ring, and the style of wedding band I wanted. Simple. A few diamonds evenly spaced around the band.

Well, a couple of weeks ago Mr. S and I took a trip back to Chicago's jewelers row to seek out our weddings bands. I bought along pictures of what exactly I thought I wanted and we tried on ring after ring. When I finally tried on the ring that I'd thought I had to have, it just didn't do anything for me as a wedding band (as a ring on the other hand? Perfect, sign me up! But not with my e-ring).

I ended up finding an AMAZINGLY sparkly ring with prong-set round cut diamonds. Swoon. But it would have put us at the top of our ring budget (we'd been looking to spend $1,200 max for both bands). Hmm. I put on my budget hat and tried on another happily sparkly band with round cut channel set diamonds over the top half of the band that was SO freaking under budget, there wasn't a question which ring I'd choose. I love me a bargain.

Mr. S wavered between a brushed white gold band and a shiny tungsten band...he happened to fall in love with the tungsten which was also very budget-friendly...woo hoo!

Here's some shots of the rings (please disregard the horrendous lack of focus...my camera was dying)...


Mmm...sparkly....


...I secretly love wearin' these together around the house, shhh....


We picked up our rings last week, all sized and ready to go, and while there they spruced up my e-ring...I'll be perfectly honest - bling looks a whole lot bigger when it's all shiny and clean! My e-ring has never looked better.

I'm so pleased that we both got rings we love but only spent $675 of our $1,200 budget. I definitely don't think you have to empty your wallet to find something special. AND with the leftover money that we'd allocated for our rings, we can go ahead and pay off one of our vendors now rather than in September (I'm so excited to have one less payment leading up to the wedding!).

Did you stay within or bust the budget when you picked our your wedding bands?