Ellie wrote to us with pictures of her gorgeous ring and the story of how her fiance, Mark, designed it. NeatO!
Here’s what Ellie writes:
I don’t know if my ring qualifies as part of your showcasing rings that aren’t the typical diamond solitaire, because the stones in my ring are diamonds – but the ring itself isn’t typical.
My fiance, an engineer, designed my ring himself in SolidWorks, the same 3D modeling program he uses at work to design roller coasters. {Did you catch that? ROLLER COASTERS!}
He proposed with a 3D-printed plastic prototype of the ring that was scaled to just over twice the size of my ring, because when he tried to print it smaller, the plastic material was too thin and broke. The design for the ring was inspired by the Celtic triskele (triple spiral), creating a series of interwoven pairs of spirals. (If you’re interested, you can read more about this here.)
We got the ring made out of palladium because the mark-up on platinum is so insane, and white gold would need to be replated. We used a diamond as the center stone because my Aunt passed it to me when I was 16 and it is an heirloom stone. It’s .35 carats, so it falls into the range that usually makes people say, “oh, that’s….nice”, but it’s been my experience that because the ring itself is so interesting, nobody notices the size of the stone. (And I do divorce law for low-income clients, so I’m perfectly happy with a smaller-than-usual ring.) Additionally, anything larger would have been enormous with the setting.
I initially didn’t want a diamond, but it was important to my fiance that the ring have one, and since we had the heirloom, it didn’t have as much baggage; and it was important to me that if my ring was going to have a diamond, it didn’t look like a typical diamond solitaire. I’m so happy with what we came up with as a compromise.
The picture of me is indeed the “big” ring, right after Mark proposed. It actually took about 5 weeks to find a designer and get the ring made, but it was so worth it.
Yay Ellie! Yay Mark!
Readers: Do you have an unusual engagement/wedding/commitment ring? We’d love to profile you here! Please send an email to helpfulturtle {at} turtlelovecommittee {dot} com!
