Finding that perfect ring…

There’s one thing you should know about Dominique: when it comes to fashion and accessories she knows what she likes. And the thing about me: I have absolutely no idea what she likes! Seriously, we’ve been together ten years, I know practically everything about her, but put me in a shop and ask me to pick out an item of clothing that Dom will like and I haven’t got a clue! Well, unless she’s been doing some seriously heavy hinting, (though even then I’m often oblivious as proved by my delayed proposal!) So, when it came to picking out the ring that would symbolize our eternal commitment to one another; the ring that she would wear for the rest of her life, the most important thing I would ever buy for her I did what every self-respecting guy would do: I put together what must surely be the three most useful tools at my disposal:

1) My laptop
2) A beer…ok 2 beers…ok a 6-pack.
3) A DVD of “Lord of the Rings” – what greater inspiration could there be?

Now, Lord of the Rings is a long film. Particularly when you watch the entire trilogy back to back. But at the end of it three things had happened. Firstly I’d gotten pretty drunk. Secondly I’d fallen asleep. Thirdly I’d only found one ring that I actually had any interest in. It turns out that Lord of the Rings is largely about destroying a ring rather than finding one and by this point I was pretty much right there with them ready to destroy every one of the rings I’d been staring at for the past 9 hours. On the plus side though I had managed to take my Championship manager team to the FA Cup final before they inevitably let me down…again. So that’s good.

Anyway. The next day I came to the realization that typing “Engagement rings for Dom” into google in various different forms clearly wasn’t working. It was time I got out to some Jewellers and had a look for myself. Now one thing I do know about Dom is that she likes things that are unique so I started off by hitting the local businesses for those one-off pieces. In fact I’d woken up with a brain-wave. Commercial photography is one part of Dom’s business and I remembered she’d once photographed some jewellery for one of the local companies and loved many of the pieces. So that’s where I headed first, trawling my memory for which rings she’d particularly liked with a slightly smug feeling of genius, dusting off my wallet as I walked. When I got there I looked in the window and was surprised to see a very sparse display, large gaps appearing to dominate the mounts. As I stepped inside to see a damaged display cabinet in the corner the reason became clear: they’d been robbed. The day before armed men had stormed in, held the owner at knife- point and grabbed whatever they could! I felt so sorry for the guy and desperately wanted to buy something from him but it just wasn’t there. None of the rings that were left felt right. After some conciliatory words to the still clearly shaken owner it was time to move on.

I visited every jewellery shop in town but found nothing. Then I went to every jeweller in Hull and, though I gained a couple of ideas, still nothing felt quite right. It was time to call in reinforcements.

I’d been desperate to keep my proposal a secret and there was only one person who actually knew about it. (Well actually the one person who’d guessed correctly and can always tell when I’m lying) – My brother Martin. He’d got married not that long before, he’d been a best man before and he knew York well which was to be my next destination; surely he was the man to help me. We met up in York and decided that morning that one way or another we would have the ring by the end of the day. The first thing I wanted to do was go and find the one ring I had spotted online with the help of Gandalf. Still it was the only ring I had actually felt any connection with but I’d only ever seen it online; for all I knew it was actually a well decorated hula-hoop (which by the way was starting to sound like it wasn’t a bad idea by this point!) So, off we set, two men on a mission determined that nothing would stop us in our mission for the ring, just like Frodo and Samwise. Although they did stop for elevenses… so so did we. Anyway, one small pot of tea and a bag of hula hoops later we were on our way.

When I saw it in the shop something happened: I pictured her saying yes for the first time. It was a classic style: a Platinum, princess-cut diamond eternity ring, the diamond sparkling away like nothing I’d seen before. It seemed very her, but was it just too classic? Would she want something more unique? We moved on.

For any potential grooms out there looking for engagement rings I recommend York. It has an incredible number of jewellers. They seemed to be everywhere, too many some would argue. I was absolutely knackered!

As we travelled around Martin started talking to the assistants and two things happened. Firstly we got some interesting looks as people started to mistake us for a gay couple, and secondly he started picking up the lingo. “So what’s the GIA Clarity rating on this ring?” How many carats is that?” I still have no idea what he was talking about but he made sure we were getting a good deal and it sounded impressive when I later told Dom all about her ring!

Anyway by 4pm we had 3 contenders: The princess-cut ring I had found online, a really unique and unusual tension style ring and an emerald cut ring on which I was less keen but it had an enormous and apparently flawless diamond on it! As we sat down to make the decision over a cup of tea, the caffeine made one thing clear: the emerald cut wasn’t right, we were only considering it thanks to the very persuasive (and admittedly quite attractive) saleswoman who had cast some sort of spell on us. And given us wine. It was down to two. Classic or unique? The thing with the unique ring was that it wasn’t a style I’d normally like and it wouldn’t sit well with a wedding ring. But I liked it. A lot. After our 6th cup of tea my brother was about to kill me. Really. He was a man on the edge. We decided to go back and have a final look.

As I went back and picked up the princess-cut ring for the first time I knew my decision had been made. I just didn’t want to let it go! The ring of power had spoken and I decided there and then that this ring belonged with my precious. Hey, it was far too expensive to throw into some big lava pit… seriously Frodo, what a waste of money. It turned out that the very first ring that had caught my eye was the one I wanted her to have and, as it happens, the one she fell in love with. If only I’d realised that on that first day instead of doubting myself and having that third pint! Carlsberg don’t do engagement rings, but if they did, I’d definitely drink to that!