Our love story was never basic. It was years and years in the making. It was extraordinary because the foundation was based on endless hours spent as two people but one soul. He's the part of my life that makes me feel the most gratitude, and when it comes to having chosen a husband to share my life with, I hit the jackpot.
With every photo together, every milestone, and every party, a new page of the story was written.
Ryan proposed with a beautiful ring when we were 21 years old. On one of the many times we were shopping for rings together I tried this particular ring on. He said he knew in that moment that it was perfect. By the time we were married we were 23 and ready to take on the world as husband and wife.
These photos from our wedding show off the beautiful set of rings that were picked out for the occasion, along with a cork for every anniversary that came before it...
About 3 years after our wedding, I had my wedding band and engagement ring welded together. The band always spun around my finger and I constantly fidgeted with it, but this new arrangement sat perfectly on my left hand and was always pointing the right way. I loved it.
The only problem was the tiny little space between the two bands started to irritate my finger. If I wore my ring for longer than 2 weeks without taking it off, my finger would start to get red and almost chapped in that one line where the rings didn't touch. I'd have to take it off and rotate it with another ring that I sometimes wore on my right hand. Once the redness went away, I'd go back to my original ring and start the process over again.
I hated that this beautiful ring was sitting in my closet half the time and irritating my finger the other half. I started considering having the stones re-worked into a new setting with a slimmer band that wouldn't cause any irritation. And in typical fashion I became obsessed with the idea. A week or so later I made an appointment with my friend Cara, owner of Stór by Margot and the premier ring designer in this beautiful city. If there was anyone I trusted with my precious stones, it was Cara.
I had done a little bit of Googling (which, you know really means Pinteresting...) and stumbled across a photo of a cluster ring:
I had never seen something like it before! I loved the asymmetrical look and started thinking about how I could create something super unique...
By the time I met with Cara I had collected 6 pieces of jewellery that Ryan had given me over the years. Of course my engagement ring and wedding band were at the forefront, but he had also given me a tennis bracelet in high school and a pair of solitaire diamond earrings during university. Together with another ring from our very early days, we had all of the pieces we needed to be able to make a cluster ring that truly honoured our love story.
Cara turned me onto the idea of incorporating a new stone as well; a new piece of the puzzle to always remember this part of our story. I was obsessed with one of the pear shaped stones in her collection and Cara ran with it!
Once I had handed over my pieces Cara went to work inputting the dimensions into a program and playing around with the design. She showed me two options which were immediately forwarded to my all-girls-group-chat for approval. We okayed our favourite design and that was that!
The 19 stones from my wedding band would form the halo around the new pear stone in the middle.
I was genuinely curious about the entire process and begged Cara to send me some behind the scenes photos of the creation process. She blew me away with updates the whole time and it made me feel so connected to the piece even before I had it in my hands. I couldn't WAIT to see a fully realized version!
A pencil sketch turned digital rendering -- safe to say my group chat was going CRAZY about this rose gold vision. Suddenly the ring was coming alive and I could picture it!
My favourite part of the process was seeing this digital phase:
Once the design was fully approved, a wax ring was ordered so that I could try it on and make sure the sizing and proportions were perfect. When I put the wax ring on my finger, I knew it was made for me.
The next update came during the execution phase, when the larger stones were added to the rose gold setting.
The day I left for a girls trip to Vegas was the day Cara told me my ring would be ready when I returned. I couldn't WAIT to put it on my finger and see all of the beautiful pieces of our love story in one place.
Truth be told, it was better than I could have imagined.
Pick up day was the absolute best!! I am so grateful for Cara's incredible work on this project. She took my vision and brought it to LIFE. The trust I had for her was unparalleled, which made it easy to make each decision as it came.
The final product is a lot like our romance: a little bit extra. Even though the setting is different, the meaning is still there for me. If anything, it means a little bit more.
I see imperfections in some of the smaller stones and it reminds me of being young and wild and questioning how the rest of our life would play out. Each stone represents a hundred conversations about how many kids we'll have, what we'll name them, where we'll live, and how we'll grow old together. Each prong is a moving day, a graduation, a final exam, a road trip we took together, a movie date. Each fleck of light is a slow dance in the kitchen, a job interview, a new city seen from an airplane window, a time we looked up at the stars.
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