45 Days to Go: Excuses for Extraordinariness, and the Most Extra-Ordinary Experience of All Time

As the wedding draws ever nearer, I find myself taking a step back to get a look at the big picture of this whole planning process. This is mostly out of necessity - I have had a lot of discrete projects I've been working on, and now I need to figure out how everything actually fits together!

One thing that I have come to realize is that I am using the wedding as an excuse. Much as brides use the "you only get married once" excuse to buy crazy expensive dresses. That is something I swore I would not do. But, I guess I was referring only to the dress part. Because it turns out, the wedding has been an excuse for a LOT of things.

But, well, I think that they are all good things. Things like:

- Inviting (almost) all of the coolest people I know to a giant party
- Having said giant party in one of the most beautiful places on earth
- Spending hours learning a new craft (working with paper and Gocco!)
- Using the honeymoon to explore an entirely new part of the world, as well as testing the limits of my physical endurance.
- Going to the dentist
- Working out more and going to Boot Camp (starting next month!)
- Getting microdermabrasion
- Learning the names of Marc's relatives
- Finally getting fitted for a bra

See? All good things! And though many things require money, I don't feel guilty about that. At least not as guilty as I would about blowing several thousand on a dress.

And, just this past Monday, Marc and I had the chance to do one of the MOST amazing things I have ever done. And, people? I have been sky diving.

After many hours debating it (mostly in my head), we decided to sign up for the Wedding Ring Workshop. This was started by a British jeweler. A friend challenged him to help a couple make their own wedding rings. And it worked. And now the experience has reached the US! There are a handful of places across the country, and luckily one of those places was in Oakland.

So, Monday morning, Marc and I met up with Alba Urbina in her workshop to MAKE OUR WEDDING RINGS. With our own four hands. Well. Six hands, because we really couldn't do the whole thing alone.

Wanna see some pictures? You know you do. I posted a ton on our wedding page, but here are some highlights!!

Getting started. We wore leather aprons because we were about to play with fire.

The gold! I guess this is what happens to all that gold that people send in to those "Send us your gold" places... We were able to include a small shaving of one of Marc's grandfather's rings in each bowl of gold.

That's me with a blow torch! And precious metal!

Pouring the ingot. For some reason, this part made me think of Lord of the Rings.

Both of our ingots. I made Marc's ring, and he made mine.

Milling the ingots - stretching them out, basically, by rolling them through metal plates.

After a little milling, we'd anneal the metal so it didn't get too brittle during the stretching process. The gold would get red hot. It looked like a Hot Tamale.



After several rounds of milling and annealing, we put the stretched out ingot into a "half round" mold slot on the milling machine and ran that through a few times, until we ended up with the basic design of Marc's ring! Mine stayed squared, and had an impression made in the center with a brass plate.

We cut off one end, to make one flat surface. Here's Marc cutting mine. That's GOLD he's cutting. With gold saw dust!

Then we used a rawhide hammer to bang that bar into a ring shape! It took a lot of concentration, apparently, if you believe the look on my face. After it was in a ring shape, we cut the other end to get the ring to the right size.

Then we soldered the two ends together! There was a lot of flame involved in this whole process.

Next came a lot of sanding and polishing.

And, voila! We're done! A mere 8 hours later... Phew. Alba told us this process takes her about an hour, and that's when she's making several rings at a time!

Close up of the finished product! Marc's on the left, mine on the right.

Here's the wonderful Alba, right before one tricky part on Marc's ring. We ran into a few snags, but she has been doing this for 20 years, and didn't break a sweat (at least not that we saw!) and did some quick thinking. In the end, we ended up with two amazing and totally unique rings. I love them!!

This was not an inexpensive experience, but, as I've already established, I'm willing to use the wedding as an excuse! No regrets for this one, either!