When I proposed to my wife, I wanted to make it special. I planned the moment for months. At the time, my prize possession was my pristine and decked out CJ7 Jeep. I was going to have to choose between the Jeep or the lady to make the plan complete. So....I sold my prized Jeep.
I bought me an old $200 VW Beetle in it's place. I then worked for 2 months with one of my best buddies who was just out of gemology school. We went to NY on a road trip and bought the loose diamonds. From there he had to make a mold for the ring off of a drawing and detailed description I gave him. I had a very specific look and 'one of a kind' ring in mind. Nothing gaudy, but nothing like I'd seen in looking everywhere.
Then came the push to get it made by the planned date. I was going to propose to her on her birthday and Valentine's day, which are two different days.
Yup, you guessed it, the proposal had to start just before midnight and finish just after midnight. Her birthday is the day before Valentine's day. As things would go, I was working with Larry, the jeweler most of the day on her birthday to get every last detail the way I wanted it, right down to the type of prongs to hold the diamonds.
All that time missing during her birthday clearly irked her and it also made me late to meet her to go to her cousin's wedding. When I crept in the back of that wedding and sat next to her, boy did I get a glare.
All I said was "I promise you that you'll forgive me for being late someday."
The interesting thing was that she thought the candle light dinner I secretly prepared for her in front of my fireplace (we never even lived together before we got married) at my house. She thought that, the candlelight dinner I made, was what I had in mind to make her less angry at me for being late. She never noticed the new clock on the wall with a sweep hand behind her so I could hit the timing just right. Heck, I even went through the trouble to use a friend's radio to synchronize that clock with the official US time.
When I got down on one knee and started the proposal at exactly 15 seconds until midnight she still wasn't sure what I was doing until I actually popped the question and opened the box showing her the ring that was just completed earlier that day. After she said "yes", I then told her why I was late earlier that day. I still think that's the only time she's forgiven me for being late!
Anyway, as you can tell from the story, the ring was an important part of the proposal for me. If any part of getting the money for the ring, chasing down the components for the ring or any of the creative process felt 'wrong' to me, I would have known then that making the proposal would have been a mistake for me. Instead, the more involved I got in the process, the more excited I got about proposing. That's when I knew she was right for me.
Twenty five years and five kids later, we're still cooking right along.
Dargo- That had to be expensive but a one of a kind ring is always great.
