Jewellery News

South Africa’s cricket captain Graeme Smith got married last Saturday to Morgan Deane, singer from Ireland. The wedding ceremony was held in Cape Town in Hout Bay from where the views of both the mountains and the ocean are fantastic. It was a very private wedding and just close family and friends were present at the cocktail party to celebrate the event.
So when did Graeme Smith propose to her? There has been a bit of criticism about it as he chose to fly to Ireland to pop the question to her after South Africa pulled out of the Cricket World Cup which was held in India. They had a pretty disastrous showing at the event before they pulled out and when he flew off to Ireland instead of going back home, there was talk and quite a bit of controversy.
They got engaged in May and her sister was the bridesmaid at the wedding. Morgan, who is from Cork, sang for Jedward at the Eurovision as a backing singer a few months ago. People are hoping that with this wedding, Graeme Smith will be enthused and come back to be a better player and lead the team to glory. In the recent past, South Africa hasn’t been doing too well in cricket. A former South African cricket captain says he thinks that Graeme Smith’s hunger could be back again.

60 year old Jack and 63 year old Margaret love the Sidmouth FolkWeek and last year, he proposed to her here, most romantically under the stars. It was only fitting that they came back this year to tie the knot at this year’s FolkWeek festival. Their wedding was held at Kennaway House and they both love the connection they have with Sidmouth. This year, the festival was held from the 29th of July to the 5th of August. It used to be called the Sidmouth International Festival and it started off in 1955 as a folk dance and song festival. Today it has grown to become a festival of song, dance, arts and crafts as well as concerts, children’s activities and workshops. In 2004, it was renamed as the Sidmouth FolkWeek Festival and the following year, it was registered as a charity. It draws huge crowds while it is on and is great as an annual folk art festival – this seaside town comes alive every year when this festival is on.
The couple has lived together for twelve years in Manchester. Jack has been a regular of the Sidmouth FolkWeek festivals since the late seventies and Margaret used to visit Sidmouth because she had an aunt who lived there. The engagement ring was designed by Margaret and it has six aquamarines and fourteen diamonds. The wedding ring was silver and was designed by Margaret’s niece.
The couple’s two children were there as were her grandchildren and they had twenty four guests comprising of friends and family. The whole theme was lavender and Jack even sang Lavender Blue to her – he is a regular singer and he works in the Customs, helping to catch smugglers. The wedding dinner was held at the Royal York and Faulkner Hotel and all the bouquets were lavender.

It’s become a tradition in this family – to wear a wedding dress that has been handed down. And when it is a wedding dress that is all of 127 years old, that’s something that takes your breath away. Allison Rinaldi got married in Canada in her great-great-grandmother’s wedding dress. It was first worn in 1884 by Nellie Campbell and it was made of ecru silk brocade and had a tone on tone flower pattern. Even though the wedding was held at home and there were just twelve people there, the dress was, even for the late nineteenth century, very grand.
The dress was put away and carefully preserved and though her children did not wear the dress, her grandson’s wife wore it on her wedding day in 1941. Then, her daughter wore it in 1975 and then Mimi, Allison’s mother in 1982. And now, it’s Allison’s turn and she’s so thrilled that as she took her wedding vows and had the wedding ring slipped on her finger, she was wearing a bit of family history. For her, it was so amazing to be able to carry on the family tradition and she hopes that her daughter will be able to wear it too and keep the wedding dress heirloom going down through the ages.
Can wedding rings and engagement rings also be heirlooms? Yes, many families and this is true especially of royal families – tend to use an heirloom ring as an engagement ring but what about the wedding ring? Will it ever become fashionable for sons or grandsons to use the wedding rings that have been in the family as their own wedding rings? Or are wedding rings something you like to be sure is new, for new beginnings?

She got a diamond engagement ring that was 5.2 carats. But when she and Jay Cutler broke it off, she gave back the diamond ring to him. Jay and Kristin had been together for three months and they got married two weeks ago, with him breaking off the engagement a week ago. She was absolutely shattered because she didn’t see it coming but reality star Kristin seems to have picked herself up and put on a brave face for the world.
Kristen used to act in Hills and she starred in Laguna Beach as well while Jay is a quarterback for the Chicago Bears. He is 28 and she is 24. Sources say that Jay happens to be a very controlling person and apparently he had wanted her to move to Chicago right away. He and his family very much wanted him to have children soon. However, Kristen had just started work on a new project and she was in no hurry to up and move or to think of starting a family just yet.
She was spotted at a bikini shoot a few days ago and she wore a smile. Before the engagement was called off, she had done a photo shoot for Life & Style, modelling various wedding dresses. She was also seen out in a very sexy little black dress which showed off her long legs and she looked like she was composed and calm. Maybe the fact that it broke off now was so much better that a lot of bitterness that is sure to have come later.

There seems to be an interest in sapphires for engagement rings after the royal wedding but the new wave today is not the usual blue sapphires but pink sapphires. Most people tend to think that sapphires can only be blue – many slightly different shades of blue, but blue all the same. However, there are some wonderful variations in colour when it comes to sapphires – and pink is a shade that seems to be the newest fashion wave when it comes to engagement rings.
How exactly do pink sapphires get their colour? When the amount of chromium in the gemstone increases, you get a pink colour which is light or dark depending on the quantity of chromium present. Today, with technology being what it is, there is a process called lattice diffusion which can give a sapphire its pink colour. Sapphires are available in many more colours than blue – you can get yellow, orange and brown sapphires too. However, when a sapphire is red, it is called a ruby and it becomes a different gem altogether.
Sapphires are mined in Sri Lanka, Australia, Burma, Madagascar, India, China, Tanzania and Kenya among other places. Does this mean that sapphires, especially the pink ones are going to give diamonds a run for their money when it comes to engagement rings? Not likely because most engagement rings will have the sapphire set with diamonds surrounding or flanking them. Diamonds still are a girl’s best friend and while other gem stones might come into their own for a while, diamonds rule the day in the long run.

It’s a question that probably needs to be answered – morally and legally. If a man pays for the engagement ring – and very often it costs two or three months’ salary, then doesn’t he have the right to ask for it to be returned to him if the engagement breaks? Or is it a gift to the woman he loves and as such, you can’t ask for a gift back? In days gone by, when an engagement was binding for most people and a marriage was for life, questions like these didn’t really need to be answered but today, when it’s almost fashionable for engagements to be broken off on a whim and especially among celebrities who pay a fortune for the engagement rings, maybe it’s time that a certain protocol is established, much like a pre-nup agreement.
Now here’s a case in the US that’s even stranger. A Dallas Cowboy star, Roy Williams, mailed an engagement ring to Brooke, a former Miss Texas USA who he had been dating for a year. He also mailed a recording with a proposal, asking her to marry him. She said No and mailed him back the other things that were in the package but not the ring, saying it was lost. Well, Roy put in an insurance claim and imagine his surprise when he found that the insurance company said that the ring was with Brooke’s father. So he’s filed a lawsuit asking for it back.
The laws are different in each country and maybe a lot will depend on a particular judge and the way he sees it. If the engagement is terminated by the man, then the ring can be kept by the woman but if the woman ends it, she has to return the ring and that seems to be the most popular way that most look at it. So when it comes to an over £45,000 diamond ring, maybe it’s wise to make sure you’ll get the ring back – just in case. Roy Williams has got his ring back – and he must be heaving a sigh of relief.

That’s the latest news – that Kate Bosworth is wearing a gold wedding ring and that’s not all – she was spotted with a mystery man who was also wearing one. There was an older lady with them as well – could it be his mother? The trio were spotted in Hollywood at the Chateau Marmont and sources say that the gold rings on their fingers were matched so it could well be matching wedding rings.
Kate Bosworth has been linked to a number of handsome hunks, the latest was her long time partner, Alexander Skarsgard. They acted together in Straw Dogs and though they have been together for a while, they never really made their relationship public. It could be something to do with how high profile and public her romance with Orlando Bloom was and she is a very private person and obviously does not like being so much in the public glare of things. However, a few days ago, news leaked out that it was all over between them.
At the restaurant, she and her mystery man were very affectionate to each other but she made sure that when they left the restaurant, they were not photographed together. The Superman star was, however, quite demonstrative inside the restaurant. She made a name for herself as a young actress in The Horse Whisperer and after that, there’s been no looking back. She’s also a model and she has a jewellery line together with a friend.

Professor Yang has a unique wedding ring and it is a one-piece ornate looking ring that has been fashioned by electric discharge machining from one single piece in three dimensions. There are a number of these machines that are used by the jewellery designing trade to fashion jewellery using what is called mechatronics. Where this is becoming very popular is in surgery and robotics has become so advanced that surgical procedures are getting to be very precise and even scar-free.
Dr. Yang leads a team at the Hamlyn Centre in Imperial College, London. Here, there are prototypers that can produce 3-D components with great speed. Like the professor says, a scan can be done of a head and the model printed out at once. Surgeons are trained here to do pinhole surgery with simulated components and this is where robotics is used a lot to ensure minimally invasive techniques for patients. All it takes are tiny incisions through which cameras and instruments are inserted and then manipulated to cut and scrape.
Right now, the Centre is working on what they call the i-Snake which is a robot snake that can be introduced into the body and controlled remotely by the surgeon. It propels itself right up to the place that it is targeted to go to. The device is compact and can be controlled precisely and it means that there is a greatly reduced risk of injuring any organs that are close to the area that needs surgical intervention.