Jennie and I met online a few years ago.
She looked beautiful in her profile picture and we had several of the same interests, so I sent her a message. To my surprise she responded, and we started chatting through the website. After a couple of weeks we decided to meet in person. We agreed to meet at a local dive bar one afternoon so we could have a drink and play pool & darts. We hit it off and a second date came within the next week. There were trips to the zoo, dining at several restaurants, and stay-at-home movie nights. Before I knew it, a year had gone by and she had moved in with me.
After a couple of years the talk of an engagement ring had... intensified.
By this time I had begun to acquire a collection of vinyl records. They would arrive in the mail, sometimes multiple times per week, and she would just sigh and say, "You can afford to buy all these records but I still don't have an engagement ring." October of 2016 had arrived and she seemed to be losing hope, so I contacted a jeweler that was my brother's friend. I knew the basics of what she wanted - white gold, no yellow. Heart shaped diamond. Nothing too flashy. The ring arrived a week before Halloween, our favorite holiday, and I knew she wouldn't expect me to propose then. The morning of the proposal, I had smuggled three pumpkins - one large and two small - over to my parents house. The large one was carved with the words 'Will you marry me?' Each of the small ones were carved with a single word - 'yes' on one, and 'no' on the other. I came home and waited for Jennie to leave for her client's visit.
Once she left I had set the pumpkins out on the front steps and lit the candles. I placed a bottle of wine, two roses, and the engagement ring, opened in the box, next to the pumpkins. I set up a Bluetooth speaker behind the pumpkins and cued up Frank Sinatra - Come Fly With Me. Then I waited... I wanted to catch her reaction on video, so I went to the front of the yard. We had a 6ft tall inflatable Halloween dragon out front, and when I saw her car pull around the corner I hit play on the iPod and started filming... The dragon. She pulled in thinking I had lost my mind. "What are you doing? Why are you filming the dragon?" She had yet to notice Sinatra in the background or the engagement setup 5ft away, so I pointed to the front porch. She lit up just like the pumpkins and I told her she had to blow out one of the smaller ones to give me my answer, and she only gets one chance. To my excitement, she blew out the pumpkin carved with the word 'no.'
When it came time to order my wedding band, I knew I wanted something unique.
I didn't want gold and I wasn't a fan of most wedding bands I looked at. I'm a fan of Walking/Talking Dead and I remembered seeing Chris Hardwick's Wedding Band featuring meteorite, dinosaur bone antler.
I loved that idea and searched the internet to discover JBJ. After searching through hundreds of designs, I found the one I wanted. It has a strip of dinosaur bone and Gibeon meteorite on the outside with a whiskey barrel inner sleeve (Meteorite & Dinosaur Bone Wedding Band with Whiskey Barrel Sleeve-3426).
It suited me perfectly - My love for history and dinosaurs, space and the unknown, woodworking and bourbon.
And they lived happily ever after...
