Engagement Ring - round 1

It has been very hard making this all feel like it's really happening without being able to look down at the ring on my finger and have a solid confirmation that yes, this is really happening.  I always hoped that I wouldn't have a hand in picking out my engagement ring.  The only reason for that is that there are so many designs out there that I don't like (yellow gold being a big no-no for me as well as most blinged out rings).  I can best compare my looking at jewelery to jean and shoe shopping - it takes a LOT of patience and digging to find a pair that actually fits right and looks semi-decent.

I started out by looking at the major websites (Helzberg, Tiffany's, etc.) and didn't find anything I felt was worth bookmarking.  Douglas, fed up with my angst at not finding anything remotely interesting, pulled up the website for a local jeweler (Morrison Smith) he had visited to get a quote on The Gem (a story for another post...).  I was able to find one design that I deemed bookmark-worthy:

  Morrison Smith

Earlier today, in response to a tweet of mine about how angsty I was getting looking at rings, Leah sent me a link to a ring blog.  I only had to look at the homepage to know that I was going to have fun looking at this website.  Not only did the homepage show a <3 ring (a symbol Douglas and I have used since the beginning of our relationship), but allowed you to search by dozens of ring types.  My favorite discover was meteorite rings!  (Remember, I warned you that I was a geek.)

Thanks to perusing this website for a few minutes, I found 3 very different ring styles that were bookmark-worthy.  Shown from least favorite to more favorable:

None of these rings have made me go "OMG!"...ok, no ring will ever make me go "OMG!"...but you get the point.  None of them really made me want to run out and buy it.

My difficult tastes aside, there is yet another issue standing in the way of there actually being a ring on my finger.  We have yet to view the diamonds that will be used to make the ring(s).  We have been given at least 2 options for this.  1 we've known about for a long - an heirloom from Doug's family.  The other is brand new - my grandmother offered me her engagement and wedding ring set.  Our preference is to look at the heirloom from Doug's family and see what we can design from that.  While I love my grandmother and would love to make her rings heirlooms in our family, I simply would not be able to have them reset or resized because they are engraved.  This is significant because my grandfather passed away from lung cancer when I was young.  What he had to go through was the biggest reason I never picked up a cigarette in my life.  I really miss my grandfather and would not be able to do anything other than preserve something so important as the words they inscribe to each other.

So, as you can see, I'm really just spinning my wheels trying to find designs and features that I like in rings because I have no idea what types or cuts of diamond or even how many diamonds or gems I'll have to work with.  This process will definitely be interesting.