The term Pave diamonds comes from the French verb ‘paver’, or ‘to pave’. The idea is to set the stones so close together that no metal shows through - but the way a master actually accomplishes this is to pull tiny prongs out of the heated metal to hold the stones in place. Really, just about anything paved in diamonds sounds good to me…And this band is a perfect example! See the full listing here. 

WEIRD!

Found this listing on Craigslist, and it’s a ring that I made! Let’s just say her asking price is crazy! She probably paid slightly more than half what she’s asking for it. 

Wedding Bands

I’ve spent the last ten years as a gemologist and a jeweler; designing, grading and selling everything from million dollar one of kind diamond rings to plain gold wedding bands.  One of my favorite rings has got to be this one:

 Custom designed for a client, the center stone is a 7.14 carat Cushion Cut Diamond, I/VVS1 quality, surrounded by Pave Diamonds totaling another 2.00 carats. 

 As absolutely gorgeous as that is, I wouldn’t trade it for my plain gold wedding band.  I got married with a plain 18K yellow gold wedding band purchased at Tiffany at 2am the night before our wedding (I feel like I should say here that we PLANNED to get married in Vegas, it wasn’t a last minute thing…mostly). Did you know that Tiffany in Las Vegas is open 24hours? Well, it is, which is fantastic in my opinion. I had bought wedding bands from a jeweler in New Jersey and had them shipped, but I didn’t check the ring sizes until the night before the wedding. And they were wrong. Whoops.

I find it fascinating that wedding bands have been around since the Pharaohs. Bands symbolized eternity, with the open space of the ring symbolizing the gateway. Believing a vein ran directly from the fourth finger on the left hand to the heart, this finger became the wedding finger for many cultures.  Gold was rarely used like it is today for economic reasons. And these bands were only for the women – men generally didn’t start wearing wedding bands until American advertising made them popular after WWII.