The Ring - pt 2

When opportunity knocks, answer the bleeping door! 

Last Friday Mr Mel's father announced our engagement (adding that we hadn't picked a ring yet) at a group he attends, and after the announcement one of the members approached him and said "You know I'm a retired jeweller?  My son is running my shop, if Mr Mel & Mel want to come in and discuss ring options, I'll make sure they get looked after'.

Mr Mel's dad didn't mention anything until the weekend, when we said we'd been ring shopping but had been discouraged by the obviously hugely inflated prices. 

While ring shopping we had found a design we love (see earlier post), then went and had a quick chat with a manufacturing jeweller in Newcastle.  They advised the cost would be approx 3 times our budget to get the design we wanted with better quality jewels & gold, so we weren't really feeling overly confident.

Last night we drove down to Sydney, and met with Mr Mel's dad's mate, which is where my opening line comes in!  

The common saying of 'it's not what you know, it's who you know' rings so true.  We knew we wanted a better quality product, but at a better price, and our drive to Sydney certainly gave us both.

We're getting our ring made, it's the exact design as what we picked (earlier post), with 18ct white gold, instead of the 14ct of the one we saw at the 'mainstream' shop, and a D colour diamond, rather than the J of the one we saw.

The design we're getting made - yay!

So our ring will be ready in 2 weeks, we can't wait!

And another bonus, because we bought our engagement ring there, we get an automatic 20% discount on our wedding bands!  Because the engagement ring is quite blingy (well for me it is!) I'll be getting a very plain white gold band, Mr Mel's will have a bit of texture to it.

All in all, we're very happy campers, part 3 of 'The Ring' posts will have a photo of our ring on my finger in 2 weeks! Yay!!