F-Word Fridays: Heavy Metal

Maggie mentioned in a couple of posts this week that her ring is at the jeweler so they can make her wedding band to match. I’m going tomorrow to settle on mine, too, which reminds me of something that happened in Phoenix. Saturday night when most of the group was standing around at the restaurant having a drink and waiting for our table, I told the five guys I was talking to, all married, to take off their wedding rings so I could have a look. There was an impressive variety….different metals, width and thickness, and designs on each. The only thing they had in common, really, was a slightly roughed-up look that made them seem genuine and well-aged. They were all subtle, as one would expect from this group of guys. Some are more sport coat, some are more sports bar, but no one brings much flash to their personal style: the sport coats were neither crested nor embroidered/bedazzled (unlike, say, half the front row at a typical Mavs game), and there was nary an Ed Hardy t-shirt to be found (unlike, say, the other half of the front row at a typical Mavs game). But they all agreed that the wedding ring, along with the watch, is one of the few ways for most guys to, for lack of a better word, accessorize. Our parents' generation, it seems, was pretty much a plain yellow gold band generation. These days, you get yellow gold, white gold, red gold, platinum, engraved designs, beveling, two-tone, wood inlays, pounded facets, ancestral tributes, a whole bunch of bling, and on and on.

Symbolism aside, I’ve always been a little sheepish of ring as accessory. I have a couple large, fairly gaudy championship rings from college, one of which I wore occasionally in school until I decided it was bad luck. And living in Texas hasn’t helped, what with a state college with 40,000 undergrads giving out Super Bowl sized gold rings to everyone who graduates. I do have a thing for watches, but I haven’t worn one since my everyday watch broke almost 18 months ago. (Maggie was secretly very happy about that, btw). So I’ve been un-accessorized for 18 months, and have been mostly content about it.

But I’m really looking forward to having this ring. And that’s 99% symbolism, and my unabashed excitement about marrying Maggie. But it’s also 1% creativity and ever-so-subtle personal expression. In all likelihood, my ring will be pretty simple. Very simple, actually. But it’ll be one-of-a-kind, and all me, and that’s pretty cool. Way cooler than Ed Hardy, anyway…