wedding bands

18 karat yellow gold cast rings with matte and marred finishes

grinding the edges of self

When we first decided to get married we began looking together for an engagement ring and wedding bands. After a few weeks at jewelry stores, antique shops and admiring our mothers’ rings we found elements that we liked but never anything we could imagine wearing for the rest of our lives. Having seen some of Vedad’s work before we approached him to design our wedding bands. We came with vague ideas; yellow gold, matching rings, simple yet unique and elegant. Vedad asked us to think about particularly important memories and ideas that shaped our relationship and informed our decision to get married as well as rings we had seen and thought were beautiful. Among the concepts that we had found important was a passage from  Ruhiyyih Rabbani’s Prescription for Living:

“Marriage, like all our other relationships in life, is a process which, among other things, serves to grind the sharp edges off us. The grinding often hurts, the adjustment to another person’s character is difficult at first, that is why love is needed here more than in any other relationship. Love, being essentially a divine force, binds; it leaps like a spark the gap between people’s thoughts and conflicting desires, between perhaps widely different temperaments.... To the influence of love in marriage is gradually added another powerful catalyst: habit. The common home, the daily association, produces a common framework, and habit, one of the most powerful forces in life, begins to knit husband and wife together. It acts as a wonderful stabilizer; if love is allowed to fail, habit itself may be strong enough to preserve the union.” 

Vedad suggested a way to link one of the designs we had highlighted with this quotation. He invited us to shave and form the wax moulds that would be cast into gold. His expertise guided us through shaving the rings and he was able to skillfully refine our work to produce a professional final product. Being so involved in the ring making process and choosing their form has given us beautiful and unique rings that are a symbolic reminder of the concepts we strive to emulate every day of our marriage.