Ring Ding Dong

My engagement ring is my all time favorite possession. It is exactly what I wanted and months later I still swoon over it.

Before we got engaged and before we really even talked about getting married, I started pinning ring styles that I liked on my super secret Pinterest board - the one that held all of my wedding lust items. Mr. Rucksack has always frequented my Pinterest in search of gift ideas or yummy foodie surprises. (You have no idea how awesome it is to come home to find that he has made three different foods that I pinned that very day.) So naturally, when I wanted to pin all the wedding goodness I saw on Pinterest I couldn't very well do it on the one he looks at every day. I also didn't want his family to see it and I think know I was wedding obsessed.

Anyway, there came a day when Mr. Rucksack wanted to know what kinds of rings I liked. And luckily I was prepared. I sent him (actually I gave him hints for days until he finally guessed the name) to my super secret Pinterest and continued to add ring photos. At one point we had thought we found "the one" only to find out it was $12,000. Without the center diamond. Whoops.

Eventually I learned to also look at prices as I pinned and soon he told me that he had contacted one of the jewelers. It drove me nuts for weeks. I kept looking at my Pinterest and trying to guess which one he had picked. I would pull up each picture and try to imagine how each ring would look on my finger by raising my hand in front of my computer and squinting until my hand and the ring sort of blurred together.

So many possibilities! (And this is just a small sample from my Pinterest!)

Clockwise from Top Left: Reinstein Ross via Vena Amoris; Anne Sportun; Anatra Jewel; Liloveve

One night as we were preparing to go into New York to see his sister and brother-in-law who were visiting from Minnesota, he asked if I'd like to go to the jeweler with him the next day. It turns out, the jeweler was in New York and he had contacted them to see if maybe we could squeeze some time in to visit. I was SO excited.

Once we got into Grand Central we hopped on the subway and headed into Brooklyn. We ended up in front of this door in Williamsburg:

It reminded me of the Wizard of Oz door. It was so big and gothic and Mr. Rucksack looked so nervous and adorable standing outside of it.

After Caroline, the owner and bling-maker extraordinaire of Liloveve, introduced herself and showed us around her shop, we got down to business which for me just meant trying on pretty things! I ended up falling madly in love with the ring Mr. Rucksack picked out (it's the bottom left ring in my inspiration photo above!) and then we just made our changes to it: 18k yellow gold instead of the white gold I tried on, smaller width for the band, choosing a diamond, and a whole bunch of other things that I didn't pay attention to because I was so busy falling in love.

It was so hard to leave her shop without a ring in hand, but after we left Caroline was hard at work creating my ring!

And I'm probably biased but I think this must be her most beautiful ring so far:

Did you help to choose your ring or was it a total surprise?