Last Saturday my future husband and I did the most extraordinary thing and made our own wedding rings. Not designed, but actually took metal and, after eight hours, ended up with wedding rings.
My husband found a ring making studio in New York while surfing the Web. It was all his idea, and I went along with it. This was the one thing that he wanted to spend money on for the wedding. How could I say no?
New York Wedding Ring is right in Lower Manhattan, a few blocks from the WTC subway. The goldsmith, Sam, was so nice, and so helpful. He takes just one couple at a time, so all his attention was on us. The nicest thing was that he didn't touch our rings at all — they were ours to make, and he demonstrated what he wanted us to do on a ring that he made at the same time. (Well, at one point he did help me when I got frustrated and threw it down on the table.) At one point I helped my FH and then he helped me, and that's nice to know that my ring has a bit of him in it, and his has a bit of me.
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It wasn't all fun — the sanding and polishing almost put me to sleep and for the life of me I could not file the edge in a straight line. And my FH got a “corkscrew” instead of a circle when he bent it in a machine. And it was not cheap — it was about $1,400 and the actual cost of the metal was just a fraction of that, (the main cost was the time we spent there) but we had a lot of fun, and I learned that I can use those sort of tools and I'm not afraid. It's the ultimate DIY project.
And here is how we did it…
Step 1:
This is the piece of palladium that became my wedding ring.
Step 2:
FH heats his ring with a blowtorch so it can be bent into a circle.
Step 3:
It's not exactly a circle…
Step 4:
Melting the edge together with chips of palladium.
Step 5:
I'm banging the ring into a circle.
Step 6:
Here we are polishing the finished rings.
And here are the end results in my palm…
Both of our rings are made of palladium. It matches my engagement ring. My FH did some hammering on his, but mine is a plain band, which is required under Jewish religious law.
This is so cool! Thanks for sharing!
Those look amazing! And what a fantastic idea!
that's awesome! and they're very beautiful! my husband and i did the same thing here in portland, only we used much cheaper metals. but we had a blast designing and making them. 🙂
This actually sounds like a blast! I'm probably too cheap to do something like this, but good on ya for all the effor, and for the gorgeous results!
My fiancee and I did the workshop with Sam too! We have a friend who lived in Brooklyn so we stayed with her and took one of our vacation days to make our rings. It was so much fun, I recommend it to everybody! The experience was absolutely a blast! If you are interested, don't hesitate. Sam is amazing!
how much did it cost? or at any Wedding Workshop location??
I love it! I've been kicking around getting custom rings done because, as beautiful as many mass-produced rings are, it would be more personal. This is even better 🙂
I made my FH's ring as well! I made it for under $40, but Im an art teacher so I have access to all the tools and just had to buy the metal. It actually inspired to use the bit from Ariel's book in our ceremony about "we all know that these rings do have a beginning… its actually hot, dirty work." But if this is something anyone is interested in doing for a better price, I recommend looking at your local colleges. A school up here in N.E. ohio offers a summer "immersion" course that is 2 weekends long and you get a better price if you are not taking the class for actual college credit.
Um, I LOVE this and I live in Cleveland. I am definitely going to look around!
the more i think about this I'm actually not sure if it would be any cheaper… but still fun.
My fiancé and I have been planning to make our rings at a workshop as well. This is the website I found while wedding planning and they have a few locations across the country: http://www.weddingringworkshop.com/
Some of the locations (at the least one in Seattle where we will eventually make our rings) hold open houses so that you can check things out before committing to making your rings there.