The ring that binds us

One of the happiest days of my life was when Honey popped the magical question “will you marry me?” I knew it would be the start of my very own fairy tale coming true. As momentous as the wedding is for both of us, we considered the symbols which stood witness to our big day vital and so have given them a lot of thought and attention, the chord, the veil, the array and most importantly our wedding bands. Seven months before the wedding, I remember we were on our way home from our Valentine’s date, we passed by one of the shops of one of the biggest jewelers in Dubai. Being the sale fanatic that I am, I immediately noticed their promotional banners saying that all diamonds are on sale. It was a woman’s instinct (after all diamonds are our best friend), I asked Honey if we could check out the jewelries on sale.

Upon entering, the very nice sales man approached us and asked if we wanted anything in particular. My mom already promised that she would give me a pair of earrings that I should use for the wedding so I thought this might be the best opportunity to look for a bracelet or necklace to go with it, after all the diamonds were on sale, what better excuse to have than that. While browsing through the very beautiful collection, the sales man noticed the engagement ring that I was wearing, he said that it was very beautiful and remembers it as part of the store’s limited collection design and at that point were no longer for sale. That was the time when I remembered that indeed the box of the second engagement ring that Honey has given me bears the name of this store. Then it hit me, maybe we could also check out their collection of wedding bands.

He gave us the first tray of wedding bands which contains normal, nothing to fancy, plain, old style, traditional wedding rings in gold and white gold. I asked if there were more and he presented another tray of fancier wedding rings, some has etched design, others were two-toned still others were three-toned but still nothing that struck my fancy. Perhaps, noticing that we still hadn’t found what we were looking for, the sales man offered us another tray of wedding bands while saying “these bands are not traditional, maybe this is what you are looking for.” And indeed it was, the moment he laid the tray in front of us, this magnificent pair of white gold rings adorned with diamonds just stood out and caught my attention. Honey and I looked at each other and we both knew that this was it, we found our wedding ring.
(our first wedding rings... simply beautiful)

Finally, on that faithful day of September, my prince charming slipped that very same ring onto my finger where the engagement ring has been patiently waiting the entire year. It was pure magic.

Two years of marital bliss, our love has strengthened more than ever and married life proved to be more than I could ever hope for. However, on our way to our second wedding anniversary, due to unforeseen circumstances, one of our wedding rings got loss somehow and as much as it pains Honey and me to let go for it was the symbol of our love and has stood witness to our first years as man and wife, we had to move on and find the perfect ring to replace it, a ring that symbolizes our covenant of eternal love.

As if faith was on our side, we were showing a visiting friend around a touristy village in Amsterdam a couple of weeks before we celebrate our 2nd anniversary, without even the slightest of intentions to buy another pair of wedding rings for we already eyed a pair we saw online but we couldn’t find a pair sold locally, we chanced upon this quaint jewelry shop. The very same thing happened as when we were looking for our first wedding bands, there was something about the shop that invited me to come in so I asked Honey if we could go in and from then on, we never looked back. We found this simple, elegant yet unique pair of white gold wedding band adorned with several small diamonds and one bigger one. It was just perfect!



After engraving our name, the owner of the shop himself gave us the rings and said: “This will be the ring that will bind you for the next 20 years to come.” Hopefully, the jeweler is wrong on that, I do hope and pray that this will be the ring that binds us till forever.



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Excess: our ever reliable community priest, Father Yacou to blessed the wedding bands in time for us to wear them on our 2nd anniversary.

- this post has been delayed for soooo long due to lack of a good picture. Finally i managed to take a shot that i like.

Knots are getting tied

Last week has been one hell of a busy week. I was buried with tons of reports to produce for month end, quarter end, year end and all possible fiscal-period-end anyone could ever think of. This is why I’ve been slacking on my blog for the past couple of days.

This morning, when I finally got to read my personal emails, I was stunned, there were several emails from several friends updating me about the status of their wedding preparations. All of their weddings are happening this year. How could I have not noticed how many of my friends are getting hitched this year? Six of them to be exact, 4 of which are very, very close friends (of honey’s and mine). All of them invited us to be a part of their celebration but how on earth would we manage to go back to Manila at least three times this year? When I told this to my sister, she said, “your age group is really the marrying age, that explains why you have lots of friends getting married in a year.” I can buy that explanation. One of my best friends, actually, she’s also one of the bride-to-be, told me that maybe, there are a lot of our friends getting married this year because according to feng shui, this is a good year for a year-of-the-rooster born to get married, which most of the people born in 1981 would be. I can buy that as well, coz I know a lot of people consulting feng shui before tying the knot.

Whatever reason it may be, honey and I are looking forward to a very festive and momentous year for a lot of our friends. I am so excited to see all of them get married as I’m sure they were when they attended ours. Since we decided to celebrate honey’s birthday this year in Manila, we’re sure to be able to attend to two weddings which happen in the same week, what joy! Birthdays and weddings are perfect combinations after all. Now, we have to make a crucial decision, what other month are we going back to Manila? Ninuninuninu…. We really have to decide soon if we want to save on ticket costs. One of the disadvantages in living far from home, you have to choose some important dates, you can’t be there in all.