Your engagement ring should reflect your style and personality. With so many different options on the market to choose from, it can be hard to find the perfect one. If you have a feminine style and like dainty, floral designs, a flower-inspired ring is perfect for you.
Take a look at these romantic rings that will have you living in springtime forever:
Image:Pexels
A realtor, Daniel John, proposed to his girlfriend, Megan Cheng, during a community ice-skating event on Family Day in Richmond, Canada. The proposal had been well thought out and planned, being six months in the making.
The real estate company (Sutton Group Seafair Realty) that John works for have rented out an ice-rink for Family Day for the last three years. As they sat down to plan this year’s event, he devised a plan to propose to Cheng.
“I wanted to do something original for her…So about six months ago, I brought up the idea. And (the Sutton team) all said it was a great idea and I was kind of on the fence,” said John to Richmond News.
“But that’s what got it going. And then a really good reason (for it) was that all of our family and friends usually come out (to the skate)…which I know is important to her,” he added.
John noted that one of the other reasons he pushed on with this plan was that he could get some good footage and photographs, as his colleagues could hide in plain sight. Most members of the team lent a hand, ensuring that there was music, stopping the Zamboni from ruining the proposal, and convincing Cheng that she needed to be on the bench.
When the time came for the big question, John said he had never been more nervous in his life. He performed an ice-skating dance routine in his tux, then glided over to fetch Cheng from the bench. Finally, he got down on one knee and asked…and she said yes!
“She was very surprised…She was like, ‘Oh, you never lie to me, I can’t believe you pulled this off,'” said John.
The happy couple, who have been together for just over three years, have not yet set a date for the wedding.
Watch the proposal unfold here:
Image: Youtube / Richmond News
Once you receive your precious engagement ring, it’s understandable that you’d never want to take it off. The ring shows your partners love, affection, and commitment to you, which makes it extremely special. For this reason, it needs to be protected!
The best way to protect your engagement ring is to know when you shouldn’t wear it. This way you won’t lose or damage it.
Here’s when to remove the bling:
– When you’re doing housework
While you’re cleaning you may knock the ring. This is more common an occurrence than you’d expect. To ensure that your ring remains unscratched and unharmed, remove it before you start cleaning.
Additionally, cleaning products like bleach and ammonia damages both the metal and the stone of your ring.
– In the shower
The scrubbing and soaking you do in the shower will take a toll on your band. It may even end up scratched.
– Working out
First off, the ring may fall off and you’ll lose it. That’s the last thing you’d want. Second, the ring could get damaged by weights you use – the pressure on the ring could bend the band and result in the stone falling out of its setting.
– During your beauty routine
Soaps, creams, perfumes and other such products all result in damage to your ring. If you keep your ring on every time you apply these products, it will build up and collect. This will result in a build up of grease and over time will result in deterioration. If the products get under the stone, it way loosen it from its setting too.
– Travelling
Travelling is tiring and keeps you busy, you could get lost in the activities and end up losing your ring.
– Cooking
This is a recipe for disaster. The oils, fats, and flours will result in long term damage to your engagement ring. In fact, cooking is one of the biggest reasons people’s rings get ruined! So ensure that you take it off when preparing that romantic meal.
Image: Unsplash
Red is often considered the colour of love, so what’s more romantic than a ruby? This red-hued stone has been a favourite of royalty for centuries, earning the moniker ‘king of gems’.
Rubies make up one of the four main precious gemstones, joining emerald, sapphire and diamond. The word comes from the Latin “rubens”, meaning red. The stone is made up of corundum, a crystalline form of aluminium oxide containing traces of iron, titanium, vanadium and chromium. Technically, rubies and sapphires are the same stone as they are made up of the same chemical properties. However, a stone of this makeup in any colour besides red is considered a sapphire. The mineral chromium is what gives the stone its characteristic red tinge, differentiating it into a ruby.
Given its deep red colouring, rubies are often associated with love and desire. The stone can range in shades from pink to oxblood. The most desirable shade is called ‘pigeon-blood’, a deep red with a hint of blue.
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Rubies are found all over the world, from Myanmar (previously Burma), Africa, Australia to the USA. This precious gemstone has long been highly revered by Asian cultures. The first ruby was discovered in Myanmar back in 600AD and were worn as talismans by Burmese soldiers in battle as a form of protection. In Sankrit, rubies are called ratnaraj, or “king of precious stones”.
Popularity soon spread to Europe and rubies became one of the most sought-after gems for European royalty and the upper class after it was selected as the stone of choice for British coronation rings back in the 13th century. The stone was said to guarantee health, wealth, wisdom and success in love.
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As with other gemstones, rubies are graded on the four C’s: colour, cut, clarity and carat weight. The world’s most valuable ruby is the Sunrise Ruby, a 25.59-carat (5.1 g) “pigeon blood” ruby discovered in Myanmar. The stone was mounted by Cartier and set between heptagonal diamonds weighing 2.47 carats (0.49 g) and 2.70 carats. It sold for a record $30.42 million on May 12, 2015 at a Sotheby’s auction in Geneva, Switzerland to an anonymous buyer.
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Feature image: Unsplash
Inviting your friends and family to your wedding day should not be taxing on the environment. The idea of posting your wedding invites is a thing of the past (or it should be) purely based on the carbon emissions that it takes to get your invite to each individual guest. Save costs and save the planet with these eco-friendly wedding invites.
E-vites
Inviting your guests to your wedding by way of email is a sure-fire way to protect the planet. Not only does it eliminate the risk of the invite getting “lost in the mail” but it gives your guest an effortless response mechanism. You can detail your invite as elaborately or minimalist as you please. It also allows you to keep track of who is and isn’t able to attend. Voila, planet saved.
Seed paper invites
If you’re old-school and want to send physical invites, fine, but be sure to use plantable seed paper. This can be sourced online. The paper is customisable and durable. Seed paper gives back to the planet by growing new plant life, in return for your carbon emission – unless you hand-delivered the invites in an electric car, of course.
Make your own invites
Again, if you want to keep things traditional, add an eco-spin. Make your own invites using compostable or seed paper, use environmentally-friendly ink and ensure no glue, wax, glitter or plastic is used in the process. Request that your guests RSVP electronically to you over email so that nothing gets lost along the way. By doing this you’ll have a digital record of attendees that can be used to send thank-you mailers out after the wedding. A win-win.
Tips to remember:
– Delivering invites means carbon emissions are offset into the atmosphere.
– Glitter is a micro-plastic and is harmful to the natural world so avoid it at all costs.
– Use seeded paper for all your wedding stationery, it helps the planet and small local businesses to thrive
– An e-vite really is the most eco-friendly option available if you’re looking to keep your wedding as clean as possible.
Image: Unsplash
For those humanitarians and environmentalists out there, engagement ring shopping can be a struggle. Due to the carbon footprint – among other things – caused by diamond mining, younger people are attempting to take a step away from the traditional engagement ring. This has led to a fast growing trend – lab-grown diamond rings.
According to BBC Future, almost 70% of millennials have considered this guilt-free engagement ring alternative. An added bonus to lab-grown diamonds for your engagement ring is that they are much more affordable, meaning you won’t break the bank.
So what exactly is a lab-grown diamond?
Essentially, they are man-made diamonds. What’s interesting, however, is that while they are created in laboratories, they are chemically and physically identical to natural diamonds, and are just as hard.
There are two main methods used to grow these diamonds: The CVD (chemical vapor deposition) method and The HPHT (high pressure high temperature) method. Lightbox, a company who lab-grows diamonds describes these methods:
CVD – “Lab grown diamond seeds are loaded into a CVD reactor. Then, a mix of gasses containing carbon is added at a very low pressure. Microwaves are added to heat the gases and generate a plasma. When the temperatures climb over several thousand degrees, the gas molecules break apart and carbon atoms bond to the seeds, growing them one layer at a time,” says Lightbox.
HPHT – “This method mimics the conditions under which diamonds naturally form. Large mechanical presses are used to apply extreme pressure and high temperature to carbon in the presence of a diamond seed. The seeds act as a template for a lattice of carbon to grow layer by layer over the course of a few days,” they said.
Because of their man-made nature, they only take a few weeks to make whereas a real diamond takes billions of years to grow.
So if you’re looking to live a more eco-friendly, sustainable and conscious life then lab-grown diamonds are the way to go!
Here are some lab-grown diamond engagement rings to inspire you:
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Image: Unsplash
Who knew a post on a public Facebook page could change your life? For one couple, their love story began from one simple picture on the popular I’m Staying Facebook group.
Isaiah Samoan-Joe Harry and Sinead Gabagas first met online when Isaiah shared a selfie to the I’m Staying Facebook group. Sinead was one of many who responded positively to the image, leaving a nice comment. She must have liked what she saw, because Sinead quickly sent Isiah a friend request, which he happily accepted. Isaiah took it even further by sending her a bold direct message, saying “Your name sounds better with my surname next to it”.
The pair quickly grew close, messaging each other until the early hours of the morning and speaking on the phone. At the time, however, Sinead was in hospital in Pietermaritzburg and Isaiah lived in Pretoria. They decided it was time to meet up in early Februrary, and Sinead travelled down to meet her mystery man for the first time.
Luckily, their first time meeting in person couldn’t have gone better. They were inseparable, and the one-week trip turned into two weeks. When the time came for her Sinead to go back home, Isaiah decided to make a grand romantic gesture. He went down on one knee and proposed, and of course, she said yes!
Isaiah an Sinead plan to marry in September this year. Congrats to the happy couple!
Feature image: Facebook
“Under the sea / Under the sea / Darling it’s better / Down where it’s wetter / Take it from me”. Who knew the lyrics from ‘Under the sea’ could be taken so literally? This couple love being underwater so much, they got engaged in the Caribbean Sea!
Ethan Studenic and Morgan Whittaker are passionate scuba divers, so naturally Studenic wanted to extend this love by literally popping the question under water. He spent 5 years planning out this elaborate proposal to his girlfriend of 10 years to make sure its nothing short of perfect. He proposed during a scuba diving excursion at the Caribbean island of Bonaire, where the couple spent their very first holiday together.
“Five years ago, I had the idea of an underwater proposal. I thought it would be cool, really unique and interesting,” Studenic told Fox News. “I decided to propose on the first reef we dove together.”
“I wanted it to be a romantic proposal and I’m not the greatest at that kind of thing,” Studenic said. “I thought if I could go back to Bonaire, I could recapture that magic of our first vacation away together.”
Studenic had seaglass saved from their first Bonaire trip embedded into the engagement ring, which he kept hidden inside a seashell.
For the big moment, the couple swam down for a good spot, and Studenic pretended to find a seashell. The words “Will you marry me” were written inside the shell. Of course, Whittaker said yes!
Watch the video of their proposal below:
“I was pretty shocked,” Whittaker remembered. “When he first reached down, I honestly thought he was picking up a wild animal.
“When he was opening up the shell I was seriously worried and then I just sat there in total shock. I said absolutely yes.”
“Ethan introduced me to scuba diving and it is one of the things we love most in the whole world so it was wonderful to have the proposal in that setting,” she added.
The couple plan to officially tie the knot in April, and its sure to be amazing.
Feature image: Youtube / Metro
Pitch Perfect actress Brittany Snow recently celebrated her upcoming nuptials with a star-studded joint bachelor / bachelorette party.
Snow and fiancé Tyler Stanaland are engaged to be wed in 2020. The pair opted to join forces and share their bachelor/bachelorette weekend in Palm Springs.
The weekend featured a number of Snow’s Pitch Perfect co-stars, including Anna Kendrick, Anna Camp, and Kelley Jakle. 90210 star Jessica Stroup, Snow’s co-star from the 2008 slasher remake Prom Night, was also in attendance.
“A weekend I’ll never forget. #snowonebutyou #thefinalsnowdown.Thank you to the best crew.” the actress captioned the series of images.
Feature image: Instagram / Brittany Snow
The bachelorette party is about letting loose and having a good time with your girls. You’ve got long lists of things to do and organise for your wedding day and you’re feeling very overwhelmed. This party is meant to be a time away from all the hustle and bustle.
But, it can get a little complicated if you don’t prepare. It can also get a bit messy if you haven’t thought the event through before hand.
Here are some do’s and don’ts to ensure you have the best, most relaxing time.
For Brides
Do:
– Say what you want and be clear about it. Let your bridesmaids know what you expect and what you’re comfortable with. If you want something quiet and low key, say so. If you don’t want a stripper, say so. This is the best way to avoid disappointment and an event that makes you super uncomfortable.
– Respect your partner’s comfort level. If they are not comfortable with you being around exotic dancers, that is something that you should take into consideration. It’s not worth a fight.
– Allow the bridesmaids some freedom. Let them get creative with the information you’ve provided and don’t try to control everything! You’ve given them your guest list, told them what you want and don’t want, so let them run with it. They are your nearest and dearest after all!
Don’t:
– Stay glued to your phone all night. You can check in with your soon-to-be once or twice, but avoid texting all night. Your friends will be annoyed, you’ll come across as ungrateful, and in the end you’ll regret it as you won’t have enjoyed your night.
– Feel obligated to invite every woman you know. This is an intimate event. Only your closest friends should be there.
– Let the “last chance” talk get the best of you. Most will be encouraging and excited about your upcoming big day. But at your bachelorette party, there may be a few chats about this being your last chance to partake in some questionable activities. Don’t fall into this trap. It’ll be nothing but trouble ahead if you do.
For bridesmaids
Do:
– Respect the brides wishes. If she said no strippers, then do not hire strippers. You’ll ruin her night if you do.
– Plan the event well in advance. You want everybody to make it, so planning in advance ensures that the date is saved and arrangements can be made. Included in the planning is what you’ll do on the evening. Make the bookings necessary and plan the games. This allows you to have a stress free night.
– Take photos and make memories. This is something you’ll all never want to forget. Don’t forget to put somebody in charge of photography.
Don’t:
– Invite mothers or mothers-in-law. I guarantee you, it will be awkward.
– Force the bride into things she’s uncomfortable with. If you’ve planned a silly outfit for her, but she refuses to wear it then let it be. Forcing it will cause unnecessary tension and the bride, the most important person at the event, won’t enjoy it.
– Get post happy. Before you share anything online, check with the bride. She might not want people seeing pictures of this intimate, private event.
– Be clear about costs for all attendees. If somebody can’t afford it, but they show up because they were unaware of the costs it will be quite uncomfortable for that person. Try to be considerate of everyone, in any way you can.
Image: Unsplash