Anyway, I wanted to give you a bit of background on the Save-The-Date card we just sent and the design you see on the center panel. Joe and I wanted a design that captured the essence of our location and the theme of the wedding (I keep teasing you with this but I’m not ready to share quite yet!). When we talked to Lisa about the feeling we wanted to evoke, we used words like romantic, floral, elegant, and vintage. I had done some research on other wedding invitations as examples and really liked this, this, and this.
The most important thing we wanted to highlight, however, was the eight-point star that forms the border of the magnet. You can expect to see more of this star in future printed materials for the wedding, as it is the shape of the diamond setting of my engagement ring. I’m sure every other bride says this, but I LOVE my engagement ring. I love it, I love it, I love it. As I told Joey, I love it so much that they will have to pry it off my cold dead finger someday (ew, sorry, that was a bit much).
(clearly an amateur photo that doesn't really give you much of a sense at all... shoot)
I think the reason I love it so much is that it is completely unique. The center diamond and its star setting were taken from an antique ring that Joe inherited from his great-grandfather. I really want to learn more about the history here but the sketchy facts I know are that Matteo’s grandfather and grandmother were quite the Italian figures of society in 1920’s Monterey County. His grandmother may or may not have been a bootlegger during Prohibition (a woman after my own heart) and his grandfather lived the good life as a result. Actually, the words Joey used were “he was a bit of a dandy”. Niiiiiice.
Anyway, the original ring that held my diamond was absolutely, hands-down the most hysterical ring I’ve ever seen. There is no doubt that it was designed by an old Italian dandy, that is for sure. If I can describe it, it was a large, rose-gold, man’s ring with eight claw-like spines that came about a ¼ inch off the band to hold the diamond. My description doesn’t do it justice and I wish I had a picture, but let’s just say that Joe used to threaten to wear it out in public just to torture me.
I had no idea that Joe had taken a part of that ring and designed my engagement ring around it. He was so sneaky! He did an absolutely amazing job and I feel so blessed to have a symbol of our engagement that has such history and creativity behind it. Naturally, the star shape of the setting has become very special to us and it was an easy decision to feature it prominently on our wedding materials. As mentioned before, Lisa did an incredible job of combining all of the elements we requested into a beautiful, classic piece. I guess the only downside is that we’ve set the bar sort of high for ourselves for the rest of the wedding, no?
