Wedding bands are in!

Doesn't having the bands in hand make the reality of an upcoming wedding really sink in?

In addition to the pics, I wanted to give some vendor reviews.  It's kinda long, so for those of you that just want pics, feel free to scroll down.

Kansas City (Country Club Plaza)
Helzberg Diamonds—tried to sell us a band with I3 diamonds in it!    Pre-PS I might have fallen for it, not knowing the difference.  On the plus side, they had a stainless men's band we both liked the style of, I just didn't want a steel band. 

Tiff & Co.—told the SA we were looking for wedding bands.  Her response?  “There they are in the case, let me know if you see anything you like.” and then she walked off!  Zero effort to try and find us something.  I guess T&Co is doing so well in the current economy they don't need new customers. 

Tivol—upscale store.  If you are ever in KC, I would highly recommend stopping in, some of the pieces they had on display were drop-dead gorgeous.   The manager ended up being the one who helped us—all the SA's were with customers.  He looked at the ring and asked a couple of questions.  On finding out that the e-ring was white gold, he commented that they would not have anything to match, as all of their in-stock pieces were platinum.  I fully expected him to politely excuse himself, but instead he talked to us about what styles we liked, actually listened to us, showed us some rings and gave us some pointers about what to ask/tell other jewelers.  It was great to see such a personal interest even though he knew up front we weren't going to buy from him that day.  Overall, a great experience! 

Online
contacted Lesley at Brian Gavin Diamonds.  She is everything that has been reported by others.  Prompt, friendly and informative.  Quote was very reasonable.

Local
Shopped two B&M's and the mall (for ideas only).  Both B&M's are very friendly, but have limited selection. (Our town only has a population of ~50,000)  Both offered to do custom.  One could do in house, the other would have to send the e-ring off.  We ended up having the one do it in-house. 

I would have loved to have BGD do the ring, but FI just wasn't totally comfortable shipping off her e-ring.  I hope to be able to work with them in the future.  Even after informing Lesley that we were going with someone else, she was so gracious.  No arguments about the quality of the ring that was done locally, though—he did a fabulous job and was very easy to work with.

On to the pics.  I'll give some stats with later pics.
 

"The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself."