Roberta

Over a month after being engaged Ian and I finally went into Barkley's to get my ring sized.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it before but Barkley's Custom Jewelers is the little boutique jewelry store where Ian got my ring designed.

So in we went and I finally met the lovely Roberta who helped Ian designed my ring, and I LOVE HER! She was a lot of fun and a quick trip in to get one ring sized turned into nearly an hour in the store. Oops!

It started with the sizing, then we decided to get my grandmothers ring sized, something I've been meaning to do since I started wearing it at 17. It's really too small for me, but I have simply strangled my finger since then.

A few years ago Ian gave me a ring that was just something sparkly to look at, but I've been wearing it on my ring finger since. However I want to now wear it on my middle finger, so it too needed to be sized... Oh why not - we're already here!

NEXT Ian asked if I was wearing my sapphire necklace that he brought home from Myanmar, I said of course because I rarely wear anything else. He then asked if Roberta would look at it to tell if it was real. She said no problem and busted out her little glass and after a quick look from the expert (the shop owner) it was decided that my necklace was real and the diamond in it is actually a diamond. HA! Go figure. We were both fairly sure they would be fakes. Good to know.

One of the reasons that I was avoiding getting my ring sized was that I knew that I would have to go without it for a few days and I didn't like that idea. My finger feels so naked without it. So Ian jokingly asked if they had a "loaner" ring. I nearly fell over when Roberta started digging through drawers and pulling out rings. After one ring that didn't fit we got one on my finger and boom, Jen had a loaner ring. Haha! I guess that's what you get when you build a relationship with your local proprietors.

Here is a pic of the "loaner ring" if you like it better than my real one I would very much appreciate you keeping that opinion to yourself, but if you like my real one better (which of course I do) I strongly urge you to comment and say so :)

We also started looking at wedding bands, I mean we're already here right? We looked at quite a few for Ian and we found one or two that were nice and one that I really loved. Roberta was once again wonderful in helping us decide on styles and said that she would look around for things that would suit Ian. We also tried a couple for me, but sadly it's looking like a normal wedding band is going to look very strange (not to mention ugly) with my engagement ring. So she said she would come up with a few designs for custom bands for me to look at when I came in to pick up my engagement ring.

Better start expanding the budget...