wedding bands

[*MamaJen*]

DP and I look like we are moving towards marriage.
So I'm curious, what kinds of wedding rings do y'all have? And if you care to share, how much did they cost?
Cost and ethics aside, I'm not a fan of diamonds. I feel like I'd be happiest with a simple band. Seeing as we already have a son together and are living together, the whole engagement ring thing isn't particularly important to me.
But still, since I'd be wearing it a long time, I'd like something heirloom quality.
I like the idea of finding some sort of vintage ring. There's not really any old family pieces we could use.

[polyhymnia]

I have a sapphire engagement ring, and we have just gotten plain wedding bands. My fiance's is titanium and was very inexpensive, if I remember it was around $90 w/taxes etc. The metal in both my engagement ring and wedding band is palladium which is less expensive than platinum and does not need re-plating like white gold ( I don't care for yellow gold ). We did have a diamond from my grandmother's engagement ring to use - we could not use the ring because the band was broken/worn through - and we used it as an accent stone next to the sapphire. I really like it and the sapphire is so pretty!! I am not sure how much mine was. I do know we could have gotten all three rings for a lot less on the internet but we chose to buy from a local jeweler instead. They provide free maintenance (cleaning, checking for loose stones on my engagement ring, etc) and for us it was worth spending a little bit extra to know that we are supporting a local shop.

(mta. here's a link to a picture of my engagement ring, I don't have pictures of the wedding bands yet: http://www.flickr.com/photos/crayolaab/2866170952/)

[thixle]

Honestly? We have a sterling silver band set... and it was very inexpensive. Neither Dh nor I like gold (or white gold, really because of the plating). I love the way sterling tarnishes, and the bands have a teeny rope design on the edges.
Yeah, DD was almost a year when we got married and we had lived together for 2 years, so... a ring is a ring, and these will last and what we both liked

[xmysticprincessx]

I had originally looked for silver wedding bands since I don't like yellow gold. I was told by a jeweler that silver is not a very strong metal so they don't sell silver wedding bands. (I had looked at about 10 jewelry stores.) DH and I got plain white gold bands. To replace mine today, it would be about $80. DH's would probably be almost $500. (Gold has jumped up a TON in price the past 4 years.)

Have you tried antique stores or vintage stores for an older wedding set? (A bit OT, but my high school graduation dress was from a vintage store and had been an old wedding dress.)

It would probably be less expensive to buy an already existing ring set vs having some gold (or other metal) melted down to make the rings. (Again, from what the jeweler told me.)

BTW, skip going to the jewelry stores in the mall. When we were looking for rings, they were all ridiculously overpriced and nothing that I had really liked. A local jeweler had a much nicer selection and much better prices, and they would have been able to custom make something if we liked. They were also not pushy like the mall jewelry stores. (At one store, the lady asked my husband for his SSN to find out how much he would be approved for! I didn't even really like anything there either!)

[Ola_]

DH and I don't have *gasp* matching wedding bands. We have very different tastes, and we figure since we'll be wearing them for the rest of our life we may as well like them, you know? Around here that is very unusual.

I wanted a plain white gold band to go with my engagement ring and he got a more elaborate ring with a mix of yellow and white gold.

[SleeplessMommy]

Originally Posted by xmysticprincessx

I was told by a jeweler that silver is not a very strong metal so they don't sell silver wedding bands.

The real reason - they would rather sell a $200-$1000 ring than a $20 ring.

We have plain gold bands.

There are many options out there (even eBAY) for stone-free gold, silver or pt rings. Some interesting options here:

http://www.futurelics.com/shop/index...dex&cPath=3_25

(also celtic knotwork rings.) The silver ones are mostly $38, the gold ones about 10 times more.

[grniys]

We have matching bands. They are gold with diamonds laid in the band. I know they cost a lot, but I have no idea how much. They were given to us by my dh's uncle. They were his late wife and his band's and since we married a few weeks after she passed he wanted us to have them. His uncle was well known in the family for spending obsene amounts on his wife's jewelry. But we've never had them appraised or anything. I don't think I could do that, because there is sooo much sentimental value there.

We do intend to get our own set eventually though. As much as we love the sentimental value of the bands we wear now, we're both a bit worried about losing them. So we'll just put the bands we were given away in a safe place and pass them down to our kids someday.

My dh gave me a $2,000 limit on rings. I get to pick out the ring I want and band I want and his band. His band will be titanium because I don't want him to have to worry about losing it at work or something happening to it.

[Purple*Lotus]

We just have plain 14 K bands. I think his was $60 and mine was $40.

[Jessie D]

Silver really is a very soft metal, I can bend it by pinching it gently.

24k gold is also soft. We got 12k bands, mine was about $35, and DHs was around 50 (his was wider) And frankly unless you get a really hard metal, you will wear it out. My grandmother has gone through 3-4 bands now in her life, she wears the design right off of them until they are smooth as a plain band. When she realized she was starting to wear out the first one, she put it up for safe keeping, and DH buys her new ones that she wears smooth.

[slsurface]

Plain gold bands (I too would have rather had silver, cause I never wear gold). We actually spent some $ on these, since I had a cheap engagement ring and we had a very thrifty and small wedding and not much of a honeymoon. DH's is 18K and mine is 14K. Both are comfort-fitted type of bands. We paid a little extra for that feature to make us more apt to wear them on a daily basis. Bought them at a local jeweler that has since gone out of business . But when the were in business they polished them every month for us for free. Both bands are pretty wide and "hefty" - especially DH's. If I am recalling right, it was around $200 for mine and $350 for DH's...but it was over 8 years ago so I may be totally off.

[LokiPuck]

DH and I have plain gold bands in 18k yellow gold. I am not a fan of all of the blingy, diamond encrusted wedding bands that seem to be popular now. We spent about $500 total for both of our bands. The cost went up that high b/c we went with the comfort fit, and b/c DH has huge hands and fingers requiring more metal needed to make his ring.

We went into choosing wedding bands not as a fancy peice of jewelry, but more for what they are a symbol of.

[ShaggyDaddy]

My band is silver and I think about $30, I wanted a distressed looking one but they were more expensive and not worth the money to me. After wearing the silver band for about 1 year, it was so distressed and dull and scratched, you would never have known it was once shiny. Which is what I wanted.

Of course I have long since lost it so even better that we didn't spend a whole lot.

[tinybutterfly]

Congratulations!

You could look at antique stores or pawn shops for vintage type rings.

I had suggested Fay Cullen, but they don't have any antique, engraved style/plain bands. All blingy.

You could check Amazon.com. Search under engraved wedding bands?

[tinybutterfly]

P.S. Engraved bands will usually cost more and the engraving will wear down eventually.

My original wedding band was dh's grandmother's platinum band. It WAS engraved when she wore it. When I got it, you could barely tell there had been any engraving ever.

I just got a plain gold band recently for around $90.00. It's a 2mm band.

I have several different bands I wear.

[sillygrl]

I lost my first set, so now dh and I don't match. Aw well, no biggie. His is 14k plain gold band. Mine is titanium which was fairly inexpensive. It has a Celtic knot design on it. I got it off of Amazon

[smellyann82]

we have matching plain white gold bands, which we bought from a local jewler in the town we lived in at the time. i think that they were about $400 and have a little design around the edge. otherwise completely plain. my husband's is HUGE which probably contributed to the cost significantly--i can't remember. i wore a clauddaugh ring during our engagement that we picked up for $9 at an irish festival the day after we decided to get married. but i made it very clear that i was not interested in a diamond (cost/ethics) or anything else expensive. we looked a few other stones, but it just seemed like a wasted cost to me, particularly because our engagement was through a long series of conversations regarding our readiness/desire to marry, and not a moment of him asking me. not my thing.

[elephantmargaret]

we have plain yellow gold bands-mine was $35 and his was $40. My diamond is 1/4 carrot and was $350 maybe? He also bought me a wrap for our 5th anniversary so I now have 3 rings with a total of 5 stones (diamond e ring, 2 tiny diamonds on the wrap and 2 tiny rubies) I love it. I would try a pawn shop or an estate jewelry shop for your ring-sounds like it would be a fun thing to shop together for. Congrats on your almost engagement!

[cristeen]

We have custom made white gold matching bands with celtic knotwork carved into them. There's a local father/son place that hand makes their own jewelry, so we went in there.

[caiesmommy]

My "promise" ring was $100 bucks at the flea market where my dh proposed in front of a fiddle player(im not even joking!)
My engagement ring was my grandmothers(LOVE IT) FREE
My wedding band was a friend of ours who was divorced. Some people may say thats bad luck but seriously COME ON! it was worth almost 5000 when they got it! and it matches PERFECT with my grandmothers engagement ring. And we really hated the idea of falling into the whole "wedding ring" traps! FREE
My dh can't stand jewellery so he doesnt wear one which is cool with me.

SO THREE RINGS $100 bucks!

[sillygrl]

Oh, my dh is a mechanic, so he rarely wears his ring. It stays on his dogtags, though, which he always has to wear when he flies (he's a helicopter mechanic in the Nat'l Guard), so he likes having it close to him.