Diamond Engagement Rings

Argentium silver has been patented and trademarked by the UK company, the Argentium Silver Company. Earlier, silver used an alloy when it came to making jewellery and it was made by adding 7.5% copper to 92.5% silver. This new alloy of silver replaces the copper with germanium which is a metalloid. It is the result of many years of research and what it offers are many advantages over the conventional silver alloy that has been used so far.

How does argentium silver make better wedding and engagement rings? It is much more ductile for one thing and is very tarnish-resistant. So it stays looking gleaming and beautiful for years. It is also extremely strong and hard. It eliminates the process of firescaling which means it is better from an environmental point of view, not to mention a lot of time saving.

What this new trend in using this alloy for wedding and engagement rings has done is to open the doors to more research being done in the field of silver alloys so that the metal can be much better for both the jeweller to work on and the customer to wear.

Elk ivory or elk teeth jewellery is becoming more acceptable today. Elk teeth come in colours ranging from pure white to a brown-white and the colour depends a lot on the land that they are used to grazing in. Sometimes, the teeth have swirls of brown on white or the other way around.

Very often, jewellery fashioned out of elk teeth is more of sentimental value. People have been known to make engagement rings as well as wedding rings out of it. These usually serve as reminders of their first hunt or maybe the first time they shot one. Other jewellery made of elk teeth includes bracelets, pendants, necklaces, etc.

The teeth that are used to make the jewellery are the back teeth of the animal and these are the teeth that produce a weird mating call when they pass their breath over them. They are also called their bugling or whistling teeth. Some jewellers specialise in jewellery made of elk teeth.

Yes, it really was an owl that brought in the wedding rings when a couple got married last month in Balgonie Castle near Edinburgh in Scotland. The whole wedding had a fairytale quality about it. The castle was 14th century, a place that Rob Roy and Mary Queen of Scots had visited and the whole atmosphere was one of old world elegance and charm.

Celeste, the bride wanted an owl to carry the rings to them because for her the owl was a symbol of wisdom. So Finnbar, the owl was pressed into service and he did a remarkable job even though it was his first time as ring bearer. The wedding bands were tied to his feet with a leather strap and he was trained to carry them in.

It was a wedding to remember and the bride was 56 while the groom was 57. They were glad that the wedding could be held in the castle and that all their children as well as their grandchildren could attend. They even followed the Scottish custom of a horseshoe for luck and had a huge flower horseshoe made and carried down the aisle.

A young couple bought their wedding rings at a jeweller’s store and got married in June. Though they had paid for the wedding rings by credit card, they got a lot of money as gifts during their wedding and so decided to pay off the amount through an online bill payment company. Imagine their shock when they got a reminder from the jewellery store that they hadn’t paid. Jason and Sarah Williams from Sacramento, USA were nonplussed because their online bill payment records showed that the money had been credited to the company.

It was only after quite a bit of confusion that they realized that there were two online companies with the same name and the payment had gone to the wrong company. There were two Rogers Jewellers – while one was the store in Sacramento they had bought their white gold wedding rings from, the payment had erroneously gone to a store of the same name in Iowa. What followed was worse – the store that received the money didn’t return it to them so they ended up paying for their rings twice. Well, the online payment company gave them a refund so all’s well that ends well.

Imagine making all the arrangements for a wedding, then find that the wedding rings that were ordered hadn’t come. Well that was the plight of a couple in Singapore. They had planned it down to the last detail and everything including the caterers, the gown, the photographers and the invitations are ready. All except the wedding rings.

The couple had paid the initial deposit money for the diamond wedding rings but unfortunately, the shop where they ordered the diamond rings from closed down and the couple had no idea where to go to get their rings. They called, they emailed but there was no response. Even the website was down. They have tracked down some of the Directors of the company but it looks like it will be quite a while before they get any response. So they just intend to go ahead with the wedding without the rings. Will they get the wedding rings they had ordered? We do hope so.

Well, actually, not all wedding rings. The plain gold band is still allowed but the ones with any kind of design, bevelled edges or engravings have been banned. The married nurses at Bradford Royal Infirmary are mad. The management has banned them from wearing these wedding rings to control the risk of infection being spread.

The nurses say that there is no evidence that there is any kind of disease being spread because of the kind of rings they wear. They take the usual stringent precautions and wear latex gloves most of the time. However, the hospital follows a national infection control of being ‘bare below the elbow’ and while they are willing to let plain gold bands stay, they will be very strict about any wedding bands with any kind of design on them. In a recent audit, it was found that there were a number of nurses wearing wedding rings with designs that could be a breeding ground for bacteria.

The nurses say that with all the precautions taken, this kind of fear is totally unjustified. The hospital however, is standing firm. One wonders how this impasse over wedding rings will end.

That’s what the market forecast is for the US alone. It is estimated that even though there is a recession on, the spending on diamond engagement rings has not gone down as some had forecast they would. Instead there seems to be a surge in spending on both engagement rings as well as wedding rings. This is over and above the rise in prices of diamonds and precious metals.

So can we infer that more people are getting engaged or married? Or are more people getting engaged and married more often? Or are they just spending a lot more on their diamond engagement rings, wedding rings and other jewellery as well?

This study was done by The Wedding Report in the US and it states that the expected rise is going to be over 13% in the next five years. It has also predicted that most of the wedding as well as the engagement rings will be set with diamonds and the metal used will be white gold. And some trivia from this study: they found that the most popular month for engagements was December and the most popular day when a man actually popped the question was Saturday.

You don’t want it lying around reminding you of how he ditched you, do you? Once the guy has flown, it’s time to get practical. At least that’s what most of the Agony Aunts would tell you. And there’s a great way of doing just that right now.

The site’s called exboyfriendjewelry.com. You can go, sign up for free and hawk your diamond engagement ring there. Or even any other jewellery that he might have given you while he was still in love with you.

There’s just one condition though. When you post a picture of the engagement ring or bit of jewellery together with a description of the item you want to sell, you have to post a story of how things went bad. Get to that site and you’ll find many a story up there – it’s a great place to vent and get rid of your anger and frustration. It’s a great place to read about others’ stories too – some sad, some angry, some funny. And of course, it’s a great place to get rid of any memories of the one who hurt you.

A few days ago, an article in one of the UK newspapers set one thinking. Do guys really notice things like diamond engagement rings and wedding rings? Well, the writer of this article felt most men don’t. They don’t look at rings on the fingers of their wives, on celebrities, on mums, on strange women.

Now we wonder if that’s true. Is it only women who are so concerned about engagement rings and wedding rings? We don’t think so. Many men might be totally oblivious to the rings on women’s fingers, yes. But there are quite a few, the romantic ones who do notice – who take the trouble to choose the best ring going, to even design the special rings they give to the women in their lives. As for the rest, as long as women notice what other women are wearing, as long as they go, ‘oooh’ and ‘aaah’ over a fabulous diamond engagement ring, diamonds and rings will really be forever!

You’ve read about so many diamond rings that have been lost and found these past two months. You’ve read about the agony that someone went through losing their ring and the ecstasy when they found it. Well, you can now read about a ring that was lost and found after twenty – yes, twenty years!

It all began twenty years ago in Janesville, Wisconsin in the US when Diane Hanley took off her wedding and diamond engagement rings to help wash dishes at her sister’s graduation party. She remembers putting them both in her front pocket and then forgot about them as she went about among the guests and even went to the store. When she did realise that they were lost, everyone in the family helped to look around for them but they were nowhere to be found. Thinking that she has lost them forever, Diane just wrote it off sadly as a lost cause.

Then on the 19th of July this year, her mother was weeding the garden when she found what she thought were a child’s play rings. Having cleaned them up, she realised that they weren’t. So Diane and her rings were reunited and she vows she will never take them off again. Diane likes to feel it’s because she prayed so hard to get those rings back that she finally found them. Yet another tale of happy endings with diamond engagement rings!