My Marriage Proposal; Learning the Jeweler's Craft

Lauren and I are, with the significant aid of an ascendant and brilliantly-mentored local jeweler named Elise, designing her wedding ring. On Friday, our day off, we traveled across the river to downtown Portland to visit the deeply bohemian shared studio space where she melts and chisels and buffs.  

Like all anxious bachelors—our hair slicked wet and parted down the middle—I had fretted on how to choose this momentous ring that Lauren would be tasked with wearing for the rest of our mortal rise and fall. The traditional understanding is that the suitor will shell out "one third of his annual salary," or some other complete hod of bullshit plucked from thin air by the diamond industry, and present it to his intended on one knee in the most expensive and heavily-draperied restaurant in New York City, his heart pounding while she, stone faced and caught unawares, runs the figures. 

Running counter to such offensive archetypes, I decided early on that I would have a ring custom-made to suit Lauren's unique lens on the world and presence therein. However, it immediately hit me that the challenge of creating the perfect ring for someone else would be equal to or even greater than the challenge of putting a hat on another person in such perfect tenderness and intimate balance that they were not immediately forced to remove and re-settle it. She has a friend whose husband went the custom route, but without his beloved's input, and now her friend feels compelled to wear a ring that looks like it was designed to a song titled, "Daddy Gonna Spray That Icy Blang-Blang, Baby." There are rides at Six Flags which have fewer complications. 

"Why not just design the ring together"? Elise had suggested, scandalously, at our first, clandestine, pre-proposal meeting, after I had aired my concerns. 

This certainly would jeopardize the surprise factor of the proposal, I surmised, but the wisdom of her suggestion grew all-encompassing. My relief could have been placed in a two-liter bottle with very little headspace. 

Long story short, Elise found us a beautiful Montana sapphire, a happy light blue with a gossamer spirit of orange and green luxuriating around in its center, and I hid it in my pants drawer for a month. (That got weird for a moment before your eyes encountered the word "drawer," didn't it?) Then, on the second anniversary of our first date, I presented her with a card in which I cryptically wrote that the small accompanying box contained the raw material for another of our creative projects. (On our first anniversary I gave us pottery lessons, so the seeds of misdirection had long been sown.)

She opened the box and, after registering a moment of confusion, discovered that I had slyly rearranged myself upon bended knee. At that point she calmly and graciously received my economically worded proposal, even though it would have scarcely taken the strength of a finger to tip me comically over on my side. 

After we reviewed my last two years of pay stubs and scrutinized the physician's notes on my most recent physical, she splashed cold water on her face and arms, then returned and accepted my offer. Delighted, I took us to a nice dinner, during which she spilled a drink on my fancy hat. (Like Garp or those people in Synecdoche, New York, we are big believers in the fortuitous promise of things gone wrong, as they make it statistically unlikely that the same thing will happen again.) So, I filled my heart with the knowledge that I could look forward to a lifetime of dry hats, in partnership with a wonderful woman. 

- - - 

Chris, isn't custom jewelry crazy-mad expensive? No. Commissioning a custom ring can actually be financially comparable to buying an off-the-velvet-knuckle piece at your local shopping mall's Harry Ritchie or Zazzley James, if you find a promising young craftsperson in the early passage of their career and choose your materials with care. Giving precise figures would mottle the dignity with which I am trying to conduct this special affair, so I will instead guide the reader's thoughts toward the reminder that this thing has to get looked at every single day from now on, and is not the place to skimp on the spondulicks.  

Elise: @wanderluster.jewelry on Instagram.

Harry Ritchie is actually a jewelry store. Zazzley James is, at the time of this writing, still available.