How many of you made your own wedding rings- within 2 weeks of your
wedding?
Anyone still working on them, the day of the wedding?
Hah!
Kate Wolf
in Portland, Maine hosting wicked good workshops by the bay.
www.katewolfdesigns.com www.wolftools.com www.wolfwax.com
Made mine right after the wedding…we “eloped”. My husband was at a
conference and called home to see how I was doing and I told him I
had a surprise…he guessed it was rings…spoiled surprise, but
after 26 years, he’s still wearing it!
MF
How many of you made your own wedding rings- within 2 weeks of your
wedding? Anyone still working on them, the day of the wedding?
My son asked me to make the rings when I was living in Canada and
packing to move to Spain. I sent sizers, no info on sizes from him.
I nagged; no result. I took tools and gold sheet home for the
wedding and made them the night before. They picked a squared shape.
Without seeing the rings beforehand, during the ceremony the
minister said :“These two perfect circles represent…” and I had
all I could do not to laugh!
Donna VA (writing from vacation in WY)
Yes! I started working on my wedding ring six months before my
wedding and had to take the day off two days prior to finish it the
day before the wedding - it must have been a sign…because the
marriage didn’t last but the ring is still awesome. I just switched
out the center stone for a lovely sapphire. Voila! Instant new
right-hand ring!
Sara D.
when I got married 13+ years ago I was ahead of schedule in getting
my ring done. We had to drive 12 hours from our home in Connecticut,
to where we were going to get married, in North Carolina. Now, I can
count on one hand the number of casting mishaps I had prior to
casting my wedding ring, but, of course casting my wax was a
disaster. It can’t go without saying that my ring had to be more
complex than any ring I had made for anyone else. I had to recarve
and recast the wax, ultimately pulling an all-nighter to get the job
finished and the stones set. I was too wiped out the next day so my
finance had to drive us to NC.
Thank goodness that’s been the worst amount of drama in our
marriage.
Larry
G’day; I made mine a month after our 61st anniversary!!!
Cheers for now,
JohnB of NZ
I made rings for my daughter’s wedding and on the day of the wedding
I was running around Whitby trying to find a jeweller who would put a
satin finish on her platinum band (I thought she wanted it polished)
I eventually used a nail buffer to take the shine off and it looked
fine but I don’t want to have to repeat the experience.
Ruth.
truthfully Kate,
I’m the worst procrastinator on the planet…the day of my last full
wedding…I was working on both rings before the fire sacrifice
(indian wedding) scheduled at 5:00 pm,unitarian minister flown in
from California and 150+ garlanded guests in the courtyard!!The
second it was over I was changing my clothes and then out the door
and a few blocks away to a parade as it was Mardi Gras season and I
wasn’t missing my favorite Krewe for anyone! An hour later I
returned and finished soldering the rings-a quick hit with the
polishing point on the flexshaft and done!!-- as they were fitted but
not closed at the ceremony (no one noticed but me!!) Most people had
no idea where I was -and the minister dashed with me!There are still
jokes being made about me and that incident to date! RER
I never finished my wedding ring. Now, 32 years later I am still
married to the same wonderful women and still have not finished my
ring. True, I haven’t worn a wedding ring the entire time we have
been married.
Finished mine the day before!
Harry
Kate, you described my wedding ring making to a T. I made my wife’s
engagement ring after we had talked about what elements she would
like to see in her ring. The design was left up to me. I presented it
to her and she loved it. Two weeks before our wedding I took her ring
from her and rather than go the two ring route I added elements to
her engagement ring. With my ring I couldn’t decide what I wanted it
to look like so I waited until the day before the wedding to finish
it. As a result I came up short on materials to make it the way I had
originally planned. The end result looked great but not the way I
envisioned. My wife jokes that as we are in front of the judge and i
have put her ring on her finger she is looking down trying to see
extra things I have done to it. So far so good she still loves her
ring.
Michael
When we married I wasn’t a metalsmith and had our rings made by the
local smithin’ couple: she made mine, he made my husband’s. Within
months of the wedding I had developed an allergy to mine (nickel
white gold, apparently!) and had to stop wearing it. My husband
bought me a plain gold band that I wore for a while, and years later
I made myself a simple forged band, almost on a whim. My husband is
still wearing his original band, and we haven’t matched for years!
Or, should I say, the RINGS haven’t matched for years! Now, I have a
design being kicked around on my bench for a new set for us, and one
of these days I’ll get to it!..
ginger meek allen
METALSMITH
I never finished my wedding ring. Now, 32 years later I am still married to the same wonderful women and still have not finished my
See, this is why there is a superstition against making your own
wedding dress. I guess there isn’t one against making your own ring
because back when they were making up the superstitions, women
weren’t jewelers.
An excerpt from:
http://www.secular-celebrations.com/weddings/superstitions.htm
It is generally considered unlucky for the bride to make her
own dress, and even professional dressmakers rarely do so. It
is still more unlucky for her to put on her full bridal array
too soon, and particularly if she sees herself in the mirror
when thus prematurely clad. When the dress is being fitted, it
should be put on in sections, never all at once, and if
possible, it should not be completely finished before the
actual day. In some districts, it is customary for a short
length of hem to be left unsewn, so that a few stitches can be
put in at the very last moment.
Elaine
http://www.CreativeTextureTools.com ™
Hard to Find Tools for Metal Clay
I didn’t get as far as the wedding rings, but I did make her
engagement ring. Once she dumped me and gave it back, it took me
years to get around to recycling the thing, but it made a nice
earring.
Students of mine have tied each others’ rings during my workshops,
which works out beautifully. Talk about “tying the knot”… 
Loren
I finished ours at about 4am. By 6am we were on a plane to fly to my
brother’s place to get married. Ceremony went very well, rings fit
nicely, and within a month we’d both lost them!
We found them again alright and aside from a few resizings here and
there they’re doing very well, and so are we.
Looking back I realize that it was a bit crazy – it was a
complicated operation for me at the time and I was really only
guessing at what I was doing – but I’m glad I did it.
To this day we like our rings better than anything else we’ve seen,
and over here they really stand out! (The European fashion is for
fairly modest, discreet rings, in plain gold: ours are about 1cm
wide, sandwiched gold and silver, and aggressively hammer textured.
NOT the run-of-the-mill style here by any stretch of the
imagination.)
Trevor F.
Paris
TouchMetal.com
Hi Kate,
I took a different approach - hadn’t even started them at the two
week mark…and, while they were started before the day of the
wedding, well, it’s a good thing the ceremony was mid afternoon, and
not in the morning. Otherwise, we may have been wearing sizing
rings…
Chris
Chris Ploof Studio
508.886.6200 (EST)
Hi Kate,
Not only did I make my rings just before my wedding, I finished them
a week later!
Cynthia Eid
I made his ring and had it ready just in time. I’d make him shut his
eyes while I fitted it. He never peeked.
The ring was dropped during the course of the ceremony and had to be
chased down. It is very unseemly for the bride to assume the
"jewelers position" ( on hands and knees, butt in the air, cheek to
the ground…) to search for a lost ring. He never saw the ring
until that part of the ceremony when I put it on his finger. He
burst out laughing. Nugget style rings were in fashion then so I had
carved the word “gotcha” into the wax.
The ring was unique and special. When he was killed in a mid-air
helicopter crash and lost at sea for a week, the ring was the only
form of positive identification left when he was found.
After many cash poor years of marage, I made my wife’s simple tiny
gold band as a class project at Alan Revere’s jewelry academy. Just
this year I finally made one for myself on a day off from work.
P.S. thanks Alan 
george Webber
Just my little anecdote…
I had only been on the bench for three months when one of the guys
came up with a really good cornflower Sapphire. I had just left a
really good job in advertising to do the apprenticeship, with a pay
cut to match. I could barely afford the transport costs to get to
work let alone eat. wasting money was not an option… Anyway… I
bought the sapphire and took it home to show my man… His reply…
“you can make a really nice pendant with that, should make a good
profit…” I told him then that it was for an engagement ring… He
even asked “who for?” A few weeks later I took home the ring and
asked him to put it on my finger. He asked me if that meant we were
now supposed to get married??? Once I was wearing an engagement ring
I felt obliged to arrange the marriage… yes, I forgot about his
wedding ring and made it the day before… He won’t let me change it
at all, it is just a simple band and still wears it as though it is
part of him… that was fifteen years ago. Some things only get
better with age.
Gwen