Diamond Engagement Rings Specialist

There’s been a surge of wedding ring sales in Japan, especially in the earthquake affected areas. Not just wedding rings but engagement rings as well and this has been noticed more so in Sendai, the commercial area in Japan where the quakes and the tsunami hit the worst. There’s one store here where the sales have doubled when compared to the last year.
Most stores in this area have the same story to tell. So many of them had to close down after the disaster and rebuild to open to the public again. How thrilled they are to find that their sales have picked up so dramatically and it looks like they will cut their losses much sooner than they anticipated.
Why is this happening? People seem to feel that maybe this disaster made people reassess what their priorities were and try and see what was really important in their lives. There seems to be a shift in the highly materialistic Japanese society towards what they are fast coming to feel are the real things in life that matter – friends, family, love, caring. It also pushed people who were thinking about marriage to fast track their plans and actually do it, fully having been made aware that life is transient and they need to grab the present and make the best of it. Meanwhile, engagement ring and wedding ring manufacturers are ecstatic.

Is it all right to sport huge diamond rings to interviews? Well, maybe it all depends on what job you are interviewing for. If it were a job at a fashion house or an event management opening, maybe it would be all right. However, a corporate job that entails responsibility and hard work might be another matter altogether. So if you do not want points to be deducted from your interview report, maybe you should leave that huge diamond ring at home.
This may be even more of a problem when you had a huge engagement ring on your finger. This could also be detrimental to your chances of getting the job because there could be employers who see an imminent marriage as days off, interest in the job waning and the like. Why should a diamond ring, especially a huge engagement ring spark such a negative reaction? A woman who is engaged and about to get married could bring the same hard work and professionalism to the job as her fiancé could, couldn’t she? But many don’t see it that way and they judge women differently.
In fact, not just a job interview – when it came to raises too, there seemed to be the unwritten feeling that if a woman could afford a huge diamond ring, then she should not really be demanding a raise because she obviously did not need one. There was one interviewer who saw the diamond ring in a negative light because she worked with an African charitable institution that was against blood diamonds and that influenced the way she regarded women who wore diamond rings. So maybe it would be a good thing to be safe and leave that diamond ring at home when it comes to an important interview.

It isn’t enough planning a romantic night out, today, you need to make your proposal unique if you want to get anywhere with your lady. It is amazing how elaborate proposals are getting today. And what’s more, many of these well-planned proposals are going viral so the man should really be practising his routine so he does not put a foot wrong on the final day.
Take the case of the flash mob wedding recently – it got thousands of people flocking to watch it on YouTube. Not only has a man got to go down on one knee well, there has to be an event built around it too – whether it features dancers, singers or actors. Recently, there was a proposal where Patrick Stewart made his appearance – so it’s a lot more than just a wonderful engagement ring.
One case of a proposal that was really elaborate was in South Africa where it took place in a really large mall. A woman starts singing, more join here, then the man sings too and then proposes. The singers were all from a choir in the city and what a great surprise it must have been for the lady in question. The days of a private place to propose seems to have long since gone and the latest trend seems to be the more public, the better. We are, after all, exposed to the world for so many hours in a day through our mobile phones and the Internet that when it comes to proposals, they must be outstanding enough to write home about.

According to a recent survey, the married men in Leeds are the sneakiest because they tend to take off their wedding rings to make it appear that they are single. The poll was conducted across the country by John Greed Jewellery and it turns out that one in ten married men will remove their wedding ring if they saw someone that was attractive and if they felt that they would like to chat her up.
The study was conducted on a thousand men and the findings were rather revealing. While one in three men in Manchester confessed that they would hide their rings in a situation like this, over 20% in Leeds said they took off their rings. So it would appear that taking the wedding rings off is a bit more crafty than just hiding it behind you or maybe slipping your hand into your pocket.
The Exeter men seems to be the ones you could trust the most with less than one in ten taking off their rings. Of course, many married men across the country didn’t wear a wedding ring at all but among the ones who did, this study threw up a lot of revelations. The ones who did not wear one as a matter of course, had their answers pat – they felt they did not need a wedding ring to be symbolic of what was in their heart and of the vows they had taken. A question that was also asked during the survey was whether they would approach an attractive woman if they were to notice a ring on her finger and nearly 90% said they would not. All in all, quite a revealing survey.

A woman in the USA who dropped her engagement ring into a moat was lucky to get it back and she is so thrilled about it. It happened at the Amazon’s Edge section of the Santa Ana Zoo in California and when Sheila of Denver visited the zoo with her three year old daughter, her engagement ring fell off and disappeared into the water in the moat and she thought to herself that it was the last she had seen of the ring.
Sheila had her wedding and her engagement rings on and she was fiddling with them as they were walking around when they suddenly slipped off. She just about managed to hold onto the wedding ring but the engagement ring went flying into the moat and she watched as it disappeared into the water. When she went to the director of the zoo, he told her that there was almost no chance of finding the ring.
It was lucky for her that the moat was being drained that week and when that happened, the director himself went into the moat, rubber boots and all to see if there was any trace of the ring. Imagine his surprise when he saw something gold glinting in the mud and he was so excited, he screamed out that they had found the ring. Sheila picked up the recovered engagement ring from his office when she was on the way to the beach and all he had to tell her was to go leave her ring at home before she went there.

It looks like this amazing Scottish jeweller has Manhattan and a lot of other American cities too, in awe of her beautiful engagement rings and there are so many who are hurrying into stores to snap up her designs. Maeve Gillies, famous Scottish jeweller is now making waves across the Atlantic with her engagement rings which are all designed with a Celtic theme. And it looks like she is making quite a name for herself all over the jewellery scene in the USA.
Born in Edinburgh, Maeve now has a long celebrity list as her regular customers, among them many stars from Hollywood. She’s the daughter of Valerie Gillies who was once the poet laureate of Scotland and she is revelling in her success in America. Her father works in the Edinburgh University as a professor of Scottish and Celtic Studies. She sells under the brand MaeVona and her jewellery is available in over a hundred stores across the country. She set up her business there when she realised that there was a growing market for interesting and well designed engagement rings, not just huge diamond rings. So she moved in and let her Scottish heritage dictate what designs she would unleash onto a willing and waiting market.
She is coming back to Scotland to open a store there too so her native folk can have access to her jewellery. She has been designing jewellery since she was all of fifteen and she has worked in Europe too as the head of design for some of the leading jewellery houses. Her advertising features the Scots countryside with Scottish models and she names her engagement rings after Scottish flowers and islands.

They made a great couple – an Ambassador and a beauty queen - Fovwe Sandra Otohwo and Oghenekaro Ekewenu from Nigeria got married recently in a spectacular wedding ceremony, attended by a whole host of celebrities. She was Miss Nigeria 2009 and though she has now passed on her crown to another, she is still a beautiful, queenly creature. He is the Millenium Development Goals Ambassador and their love story is quite like a fairytale.
And how did they meet? They both go to the same church but their paths never crossed till recently when she was travelling as a beauty queen and so was he so they said Hello to each other. Though they gave each other their numbers, they never really kept in touch till he came up to her in church one day and asked her for some of the Pepsi she was drinking and then for a date. According to him, that’s when he fell in love.
They dated for three months and then he proposed – she thought he was joking. Then, when they were on holiday in the UK, he took her along to choose her engagement ring and asked her to marry him – what could she say but Yes – he was, after all, her perfect mate. Now, they are wearing wedding rings and it really does look like it was a match made in heaven. They really put their all into it to make it a wedding to remember and for them, as well as all who attended, it was a very special day indeed.

When you happen to be a photographer and you are getting married, it is tempting to have the theme of photography running through the wedding ceremony. So it wasn’t really surprising when Matthew Harrison had a themed wedding with his cake being shaped like a Leica M9 camera and his ring designed to look like a Noctilux lens. And he felt sorry when the cake had to be cut and served to all the guests.
Actually, it was his bride who commissioned the wedding ring for him and it was designed along the looks of the 50mm f/.95 Noctilux ASPH. The engraving on the wedding ring denoted the lens formation, the filter size and had a depth of field scale. This lens has been referred to by Leica themselves as the King of the Night and it is said to be the fastest aspherical lens in the world. The wedding cake was an unusual colour – instead of white, it was all black but then, that is the colour of the Leica M9 camera.
After the wedding, a spokesperson for Leica said that she was delighted to see just how much Leica means to people, especially photographers and how passionate they were about the band. The company wished the couple all the very best. The wishes went out to them from Leica UK and it was clear that they were absolutely amazed to see how far people who love the brand would go to show everyone just how much it means to them.

The jewellery store Zales and Vera Wang are joining hands to launch a wedding line in jewellery and these will feature engagement rings as well as wedding rings. Vera Wang who specialises in wedding dresses and has a global presence, has celebrities falling all over themselves to order her wedding dresses. So what could be better than to get into engagement and wedding jewellery as well? It’s such a natural progression for the famous designer.
The new line is going to be called Vera Lang Love and it is going to showcase fifty styles. They will all be rings made of 14 carat gold and will be set with diamonds of various cuts and sizes and will also have a small blue sapphire which symbolises eternal love. The venture seems to be a really great union – both seem to complement each other. Wang is also ready with a new bridesmaid’s line and they will all work together as a total package.
Vera Wang has been on the lookout for a partner for engagement rings and wedding rings for quite a while now. It looked like a few deals were going through but somehow, there hasn’t been such a great fit like the one now with Zales and it looks like everyone is happy. Rosie Tupper will continue to be the face for the Vera Wang line and the advertisements will appear in the November issues of the magazines. And the best news is, the line is an affordable line.

For Victoria Pendleton, it’s going to be a year of long and hard work. If only she could get those three Olympic medals and add a wedding ring to her engagement ring, she would be so happy. Maybe that’s the way it will be at the London Olympics next year. Ever since she won that sprint title at the last Olympics at Beijing, there has been a lot of expectation riding on her as the country expects her to win those medals on home ground.
Victoria is thirty now so this will probably be her last Olympics and she hopes that she will be able to retire on a high and triumphant note. However, she is nervous and she wants to make sure that she does everything to do her best – and she wants her best to be able to win her those titles. Her father was a race track cyclist champion too and Victoria has followed in his footsteps when it came to cycling, going all the way to become the world’s No. 1.
In the 2009 list of honours, she was conferred with the MBE – the Member of the Order of the British Empire. She is engaged to Scott Gardner and she has said that they will get married only after the 2012 Olympics. She began showing promise way back when she was only nine and she has been winning so many awards after that. She knows just how important it is not just for her but for the country as well to be able to pull this off – and she also knows she has to do it now because she is not going to get another chance. So she has quite a bit to do before she slips that wedding ring onto her finger.

You’d think there would be no connection – but there is and it happens more often than you would care to think about. The number of people who have lost their engagement rings and their wedding bands down a drain or a toilet bowl are numerous and only after their carelessness do they wake up and try to retrieve them in a panic. And who better to contact than a plumber?
That’s what happened to Dominic Mormando in the US when he was called to a busy city complex to retrieve a wedding ring. His plumbing outfit has had a bit of success – of the two engagement rings that he was called in to find, he could retrieve one. At the city complex, a woman had flushed, then tried to pull off her 33-year old wedding band so she could wash her hands when it flew off and fell in and that was it! She and her husband had got married in Philadelphia all those years ago and she had worn the ring ever since.
The bill for the equipment would be around $600 so she called her husband who was worried about spending all that money, feeling that maybe a new gold band would be better as retrieving the ring wasn’t a certainty. Then Dominic knew what he had to do and he knew he had to help – after all, he had been married 22 years and he knew just how much it meant - so he started looking. There was nothing to be found so he was pulling his camera back when they saw something – it was the ring and after hours, they finally managed to get it. It was a joyful reunion with her ring and Dominic was glad to have helped.