Smooch: The perfect rings
While you’re probably thinking this post will be about something romantic, a sneeky kiss under the night sky or a little snog when you’re not expecting one. But it’s neither of those things.
In fact, this blog post is about our wedding rings. And the company we chose for our special bands to last us a lifetime was… well, Smooch.
Like a lot of bride and grooms-to-be we were simply going to walk into a good high street store and pick out simple but beautiful white gold rings and hey presto – job done! But when we started to look, I realised that it wasn’t quite so easy.
Firstly, I had to get my head around all the many, many different types of wedding bands there were. (It’s not just white gold vs gold, you know?) You need to decide on the shape, cut, carat, pattern and finish. And that’s before you try to fight off the incessant proposals of having diamonds in the ring from all the store assistants.
While I could stare at engagement rings for hours, looking at the many varieties of stones, sizes and cuts, wedding bands to me represented something much simpler and discreet. It wasn’t meant to be showy or make me look pretentious. But this is not to say I didn’t want it to look beautiful – I am a girl after all!
So after months of looking, we finally decided on matching 18-carat white gold wedding bands. I toyed with the idea of having a shaped ring or perhaps one with a small diamond, or a subtle pattern – but then I decided that simple was best. This was about the marriage after all; long and enduring. And my engagement ring has all the sparkle I need!
But then it was still hard to find one that actually suited me and my ring. Maybe I was being fussy but I wanted something that looked like it belonged with my sparkler, didn’t distract from it or sit loosely beside it. And I couldn’t find one anywhere!
It was actually just by chance that we came across Smooch. It was presenting a stall at a wedding fayre at the Trafford Centre in Manchester, but actually it was by chance we were even there at all! We don’t often try to brave the Trafford Centre on a Sunday but for some reason – and I can’t remember what it was now – we decided to head down there. Once we were there, we discovered somewhere a long way away outside – and if you know the Trafford Centre you’ll know what I mean by this – there was a wedding fayre going on. After walking about two miles (I kid you not) through the shopping mall, we found the white marquee.
Although we have been to a few wedding shows by now – and not found much at any of them – we walked through this one with hope that something might come up. And actually, our only find that day was Smooch.
Actually, it was Steve who discovered it. I was probably looking at overly expensive invitations or something else we have to worry about later on… On Smooch’s stall it had little glass cabinets filled with different types of rings, in styles that I’d never even seen before.
In fact, the reason it caught my attention was because I saw a white gold band in a unique shape that I had been looking for but hadn’t found anywhere and thought it would fit well with my engagement ring. The fact it had something the high street stores couldn’t offer, plus at reasonable prices meant that we were instantly interested.
Then the good news kept coming…
If you book an appointment, a Smooch adviser will come to your home at a time that suits you (which for us really means only two hours on an evening two nights a week). They will bring all their rings and you could choose any of these in a different metal, at any carat and in any width. Or, if you prefer, you could design your own ring completely.
If that’s not enough, the firm is so confident of the quality of the bands that they offer lifetime guarantee, so if they ever get scratched, bent or damaged, they will be fixed free of charge. Or, if you put on weight – oh dear – you can get them resized. And you can have them cleaned and re-plated, well, basically forever. With a ring that we hope to last for the rest of our lives, it’s nice to know that they’ll be looked after with the same love and care that we want to give to our marriage as well!
All of these were good selling points, but actually if we hadn’t liked the bands themselves then it would have been a no deal.
But, as it happens, the bands we tried on not only looked perfect but felt just right. In fact, the one I liked and the reason we had called Smooch in the first place didn’t look like what I’d remembered and while it was still beautiful, it was the simple white gold plain ring that looked the best.
So, we went away, decided to go for the bands we found, gave Smooch a call and are waiting to receive them a couple of months before the wedding.
Walking into a shop and picking out a standard ring may seem like the easier thing to do, but when you have to fight against weekend shopping traffic, other b2bs and g2bs wanting attention from sales assistants, it’s not as simple as it looks.
Instead, we got undivided attention, in our own home, with a huge selection of rings. This was by far the easiest and most relaxed shopping experience I’ve ever had – not to mention one of the most important.
Catch up on our wedding plans at Diary of a Bride 2 Be
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Natasha, I totally agree with you. Searching for my engagement ring was a nightmare–and drove my fiance totally bonkers! After stopping at nearly every jewellery window over our vacation a few weeks ago (at one point, he started filming our stops), I was done searching for the perfect ring. I decided to go online. Guys–definitely check out 21Diamonds.com. You can completely custom design your own ring. So I showed my fiance a few designs and jewels that I loved and he did the final design, so it was still a surprise! Best part–he got to design it while watching ESPN!
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