My Sapphire Ring
Yes! We’re engaged! In case you missed my very subtle announcement, you’ll probably want to go back to the previous post to see where it happened. The engagement wasn’t just in that one moment though; after we had agreed to get engaged, it still took seven months for us to make the ring of my imagination into the real object that Alex presented to me on our little hammock by the sea. And so this post is a tribute to that whole journey!
A hearty thank you to No.3 Fine Jewelry, a small Asian woman owned shop in San Francisco, for being our partners in making this dream a reality. I learned of No.3 when my friend Do-Hee worked with them to transform some of her late mother’s jewelry into a ring she could wear every day.
Our first visit was during a sapphire trunk show that No.3 was hosting for the week. Sapphires come in all sorts of colors, so it was fun to see an array in person.
I have always known that I wanted something other than a diamond for my engagement ring. Mostly the contrarian in me, not wanting what everyone else has. So I started this process with already a pretty specific idea of wanting a pear-shaped sapphire with some tiny side diamonds. We were able to browse not only the sapphires in the trunk show but also the many beautifully curated rings available at No.3 to get a better sense of what I was looking for.
With a more and more specific idea of what I wanted, we confirmed that this would be a custom ring design process. The first step would be to source the center sapphire.
We ended up going on what ended up being a long side quest, since Alex had sneakily already reached out to a jeweler friend of mine before he had any idea of what kind of a ring I had in mind. She is wonderful and makes beautiful work, but she is also a one-woman shop and doesn’t necessarily specialize in sapphires. So after months of looking for the right sapphire with her but not finding it, we decided to go back to No.3 to continue the process.
These were all different sapphire possibilities that didn’t quite fit what I had in mind, either in size, shape, or color. But all very unique and fun to look at!
Once we went back to No.3 it was actually a pretty quick process. They sourced these three options for us to come and look at in person. And one of them ended up being the stone!
Here is the stone in a loose sample setting just to get an idea of what it would look like in a ring! Both images below are the same stone, in different lighting. After months and months of looking though, I had to be sure. So I came back the next day with Do-Hee, and my own color-temperature-controlled video light, to confirm.
That’s the one!
It looks green in some light but very bright, light blue in others!
The next step was to decide on the setting, so all of the details of the band and the side diamonds that I wanted. We had two options of tiny diamonds and even tinier diamonds, so here was a photo that Lisa sent with the rough layout for my reference, and I photoshopped all of the prongs on both the tiny and tinier versions trying to decide between the two. I went with the tiniest option in the end.
Here was the first draft of the sketch given to me, and after much feedback, a revised draft as well.
And finally, after all approvals, the CAD renderings. And then I gave my approval for them to go ahead and make the ring and only talk to Alex from then on!
Alex biked over to the shop while I was in Oakland photographing a wedding and monitoring the Amber Collective instagram live one day, expecting to pick up only a small ring but being greeted with a whole bottle of champagne too. Very thoughtful, and somewhat humorous to imagine him trying to squeze a bottle of champagne into the bike bag and biking with a big ring box in his back pocket through the hills of San Francisco.
And of course, he presented me with the ring here at the Harbor House Inn!
Love. Thank you to Alex for being the best life partner and supporter of all my slightly unconventional dreams. And thank you to No.3 for making this ring a reality.
Anna Wu is a wedding and portrait photographer based in San Francisco. She compulsively documents and blogs all of her daily adventures, even in quarantine. Follow her on instagram and view more of her professional work at annawu.com.
