Engagement.

No one really tells you much about engagement. It is a strange process and different for everyone. I knew next to nothing about rings before this and realized that I had to propose, and therefore buy something much more expensive than I bought before, and therefore required considerable research.

I learned about the 4 C’s and why some stones are better than others and why Dimond and Gold are better than anything else and why getting something the woman wants is important.

Gold doesn’t tarnish and retains value and won’t interact with the skin. Getting one that is of yellow color is also better because it is obviously of

Diamond is the hardest stone and so will not be chipped when worn every day and will not be damaged by oils or water. It is also clear and obvious when it is of good quality.

In the end, I screwed up by getting a white gold aquamarine ring. It was as she wanted it in design but not on the stone or the color and it wasn’t part of a set so the wedding band would have to be bent.

It is a big screw up since that’s what she will wear for the rest of her life.  However, when I bought it, I was proud. I made a big step and I was going forward with it. I felt the ring in my pocket and I hid it and worried about it until the big day.

The big day was a different story altogether. I was scared and worried about the ring and buying it and finding the money to afford it, but when it came to making the proposal, everything went right and not at all as planned and the feeling during it was nothing like I had ever experienced before.

To be continued.

Start of Planning

The planning of the wedding has made me understand what my friends went through. It also made me ask them how much their wedding cost them and realize that I have been a stingy mother-fucker. They deserved way better gifts.

The planning for a wedding on a budget is difficult because there are thoughts and ideas about what the wedding will look like. My bride’s wedding idea was for a fairy tale wedding with trees and a taco truck. Mine was for a Jewish wedding with plated food. The plated food added a huge cost to the wedding, as did the full bar.

We began to search near and far. I quickly created a huge spreadsheet that grew every day. The venues all had their pros and cons. They fell into two types: expensive and all night, expensive that required their own catering, and inexpensive that had a nine pm quiet time.

We had to decide the number of people that we could invite, which dictated our budget and the cost of the place dictated the cost of the budget.  We had to create an A list, B list, and C list. This now created the questions of who do we invite and who do we not invite.

The budget, of course, depended on how much we’d be helped by the parents. On the one side, one wants to be helped, on the other, there is a sense of pride in doing it on your own. We would find out soon once we had the parents meet for dinner over engagement dinner.