Ring drama

A few days ago Jared (the store, not a person) sent us a flyer advertising a sale this weekend for past customers. We had originally planned to look at wedding rings closer to the wedding, but as the flyer suggested we might be able to save $200 on rings we headed out to Burlington, MA this morning armed with the coupon. Also with no breakfast, which probably made matters worse.

Vader knew exactly what he wanted, and that's what we got. Here it is: 

I didn't have a specific idea of what I was looking for, so I went in with a few ideas and tried on a lot of rings the saleslady suggested. The plain bands were overshadowed by my engagement ring while bands with a continuous row of small diamonds looked very strange on my finger. Luckily Vader knew what I wanted AND has excellent taste, and when I tried on his third or fourth pick I was happy to see that it had the "interesting" factor I was looking for without being too much. Here's what I chose:

We were happy with our choices and ready to find some lunch and head home for some football, but with Vader's giant fingers it became apparent we would have to special order his ring to fit properly. The $$$-saving deal seemed like it would still work, but after a lot of confusing conversations with our saleslady we began to feel uncomfortable with the arrangement. Basically, had we bought the rings today we would have had to: 

• buy my ring
• buy the wrong ring for Vader
• hope the main customer office for the chain would let us combine the orders to get interest-free financing for one year
• rely on some person's confirmation over the phone that we would be able to exchange the "wrong ring" for Vader's special order ring when it comes in
• hope that the price for the larger-than-standard-size ring wasn't much more than the ring we saw.

It was too risky for us to justify saving a bit of money, but our saleslady wasn't hearing our "no". She concocted several schemes for how we could save the money AND secure financing without interest, each of which relied on a mysterious person's confirmation over the phone to the saleslady with no written guarantee. As my stomach growled audibly and Vader grew visibly more annoyed, she continued to push the sale and we dug in our heels. Though she never understood where we were coming from (and continued to try to convince me to buy both rings while Vader was searching for coffee), she finally heard our emphatic "No!" and cancelled the sale. So, we left with no rings. However, we did order Vader's special order ring and we'll buy that and my ring together when it comes in. And, since we were there, we left my engagement ring to be resized (again!) and cleaned. 

The adventure was not entirely unproductive, but we sure wish we could have those hours of our lives back. With any luck our next Jared experience will be quicker and easier!