Purchasing Jessi’s engagement ring may well be the most nerve-wracking decision I’ve faced. The wild part is, looking back, I’ve faced decisions that were way more consequential than white or yellow gold, crown or princess cut, tiffany or bezel setting, etc. I’ve changed careers without a backup plan; I’ve moved across the country with only a few weeks’ notice; and when you think about it, deciding whose finger the ring would go on was a much bigger deal than the ring itself! Still, every aspect of the decision was executed with total care. I looked at thousands of rings, studied up on settings and precious stones, and ultimately found the perfect ring for Jessi in a private collection in Paris. It had to be perfect, and this ring fit the bill. Exactly the right stones, setting, karat, everything. It fit our story. It fit my budget. It fit us. Perfect.

I communicated with the curator.
I purchased the ring.
I waited on pins and needles during its journey over the Atlantic.
I stood in line at the post office, waiting anxiously for the woman in front of me to finish with her stack of invitations so that the one postal worker at the counter that morning could stroll stolidly to the package bins in the back and take a solid five minutes to find the package containing the ring, which then required multiple IDs and signatures before she could release it to me, but somehow, I kept at least the appearance of calm,
and then it was in my hands, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
I had the ring. Mission accomplished.

But then I took the ring to have it inspected.

Not knowing many jewelers in town, I went to the nearest jewelry store, a place so lavish that I felt like I was wasting money just standing there. Still, they were kind enough to look over the ring for me free of charge and make sure it was the genuine article. Of course, their standards were different than mine, which caused me to tense up as the saleswoman talked. She didn’t know us or our story; she just saw a nervous guy who loved his girlfriend but didn’t know much about jewelry. The saleswoman put the ring under a microscope and showed me every blemish, and she pulled out a ring four times the price for comparison (hinting more than once that I should’ve bought it instead).
The condescending comments started to bubble forth:
“I guess it could be 18k, but there’s not even a karat stamp in the band.”
“I don’t know why anyone thinks they can just make a ring themselves.”
“Look at that crack. This thing is just going to come apart if you try to resize it.”
While I don’t think it was her intention to shame me, she succeeded. The little ring that I was so excited about may have been exactly as advertised, but for this store, that wasn’t good enough. I kept my cool in the store, but once I got out to the car, I was ready to hyperventilate.

“Oh no,” I thought to myself, “I put all this time into finding the perfect ring to show how I feel about Jessi, and there’s all this symbolism to it, and now a professional is telling me that I should have chosen differently and that it will need repairs down the road, and now I feel like a crappy husband when I’m not even a crappy fiancé yet!”

But then, some words floated back to me– something my sister-in-law said when I went to her with my ring-shopping anxiety a few weeks prior:

It doesn’t need to be perfect.
This caught me off guard when she said it. Our culture did a great job of conditioning me to think an engagement ring has to be a flawless immortal testament to Jessi’s and my love, so I didn’t know what to make of this new piece of information. Then she went on to explain:
Rings get damaged. Stones get chipped. Settings get bent. It happens. Over time, rings get repairs. They change. They evolve. Hell, sometimes they get lost, and you get completely new rings. Or sometimes you just find yourself in a better financial situation and want to get your spouse something new that reflects the better place you’re in. Rings change. So don’t make it perfect; just make it something that represents the two of you.

Of course, the ring isn’t the only thing that changes. Relationships are living growing things, and my relationship with Jessi will look a little different every single day we’re together. This is a good thing. It gives us license to figure each other out. We don’t have to be perfect from day one— in fact, we don’t really have to be perfect ever. It’s one of the reasons I fell in love with her and one of the reasons I proposed to her: she always manages to surprise me, and with her I’m never bored. Perfect is predictable. Growth and change are far more beautiful.

So yeah, I proposed with an “imperfect” ring. I proposed with a ring that will need a little work eventually. I proposed with a ring that has some history to it— a ring that’s been on a long journey and a ring that’s drawn a little criticism from some crowds.
Because that’s us. And that’s a real relationship:
Perfect because it’s not perfect.
Mature because it knows it’s not done growing.
Fully known because there are still so many things to discover.
That’s our relationship. That’s our ring.
It will change over time. We will change over time.
And that’s okay.
In fact, it’s exactly the way it should be.

Two Very Important Addenda:
(1) Jessi said yes. We went to dinner at the restaurant where we had our first unofficial date (since we weren’t technically dating at that point), and then I asked her to marry me in front of the San Marco lions with –of course– post-it notes. I intentionally didn’t tell anyone I’d be proposing that day; I wanted there to be a moment where she and I were the only people in the world who knew. A group of teenagers were playing a ukulele nearby and took pictures on Jessi’s phone and serenaded us. Couldn’t have planned that if I had tried. Other important dates coming soon.

(2) We took the ring to a rival jewelry store to do the resizing, and that experience couldn’t have been more different. A friendly jeweler told us directly, “Well, of course there’s no karat mark inside the ring. This ring is French! That means the karat mark is on the outside along the bottom of the band. You should definitely get this appraised; it’s probably worth far more than what you paid for it. Wouldn’t surprise me if it’s worth four times the cost.”
We’re not going to go back and gloat to the previous jewelry store, but we will laugh a little every time we walk past it now. Besides…

You can’t put a price on a love like this.