ER Trauma (that's engagment ring, not emergency room).

I need to preface this post by saying that my FH and I are chemists. That's how we met, in a chemistry lab. Chemists know a lot about minerals, and semi-precious stones. In our inorganic chemistry classes we talk diamond to death. And, for this reason, we always knew I would never be wearing just a diamond on my finger (yes, I said just a diamond, I'm sorry to all the diamond lovers out there).

We wanted corundum (the red variety is also known as ruby). Why? Because rubies are rare. You see, in order to get a ruby, you need to have an aluminum oxide lattice with a 3% chromium impurity. Any more and it's not red. You can read more about it here, if you like (though you'll require more than high school chemistry to understand what's going on).

Easy enough, right? Um, no.

For some reason I thought a ruby would be cheaper than a diamond. I mean, I know they're rare, but they're also not that common. Turns out rubies are expensive because they're extremely rare and hard to cut (they're much more brittle than diamonds).

Despite the sky high prices, we decided to stick with a ruby. We went to a custom jewellery show and picked out a princess cut ruby set between two diamonds. Now because rubies are rare, and uncommon, we bought the ring without seeing the stone. MISTAKE.

Six weeks later the ring came in, and let me tell you, we were less than pleased. The ruby was pink and cloudy. How could we have paid $3000 for a stone that looked like this? We returned the ring (much to my dismay; I wanted to tell people I was engaged!) and booked an appointment for another custom show.

This time things went much more smoothly. The jeweller was much more understanding and even offered some design advice (after all, this was our first experience designing a ring). The only problem came when he looked in his large binder for suitable rubies. The nicest, highest quality ruby he had was also the biggest. With a price tag more than double that of our original stone, I had a breakdown. I started crying and left the store leaving my FH there to try and explain my erratic behaviour to the jeweller.

Turns out my emotional release melted the jeweller's heart and he offered us a 20% discount on the stone. To top it off, the jewellery store sponsoring the custom show offered us another 10% off. YAY!!

When my ring came in, it was one of the best moments of my life. It was perfect, but the process was by no means fun and easy.

And now, on February 23, we're going to another custom show to design my wedding band. Here's what I had in mind:

We're suckers for punishment.