Wedding ring engraving inspiration

May 15, 2008 8:52 AM

How did you go about picking the engravings for your wedding rings?

My fiance definitely wants our wedding rings engraved. I don't want anything from the bible, and I don't just want the date of the wedding, but no other really significant, relevant quote from literature is leaping out at me. Additionally I'm unclear if protocol dictates that we should pick each others engravings, pick our own, or have a complementary pair of engravings.

posted by roofus to society & culture (28 comments total)

For what it's worth, my wife and I have "Never doubt I love." from Hamlet. We have the same engraving, and the reason we chose it is that her parents had it and she really loved that.

My parents have "And miles to go" from Robert Frost, which has always squicked me out a bit....

Choose something meaningful to you? I like the idea of the same engraving, but I like the idea of complementary quotes in general.
posted by JMOZ at 9:00 AM on May 15

My husband and I each have half of a line from a Bob Dylan song: "So give me your hand" on his, "And say you'll be mine" on mine.

It probably goes without saying that Dylan's music is very meaningful to us, and is the backdrop for a lot of our relationship.
posted by handful of rain at 9:03 AM on May 15

My beau and I have a secret word that only we know the meaning of engraved on our wedding bands. We had it done by hand, so the script looked more natural and personal than what a machine could produce. The effect is lovely.
posted by Lieber Frau at 9:05 AM on May 15

If you have something like "OMG WTF" engraved you'll show you have a sense of humor about things. Congratulations, by the way.
posted by matteo at 9:09 AM on May 15 [5 favorites]

I always thought a good one could be "Amor Vincit Omnia" which is the engraving Chaucer's Nun Prioress has on a locket.
posted by mattbucher at 9:11 AM on May 15

Congratulations!

We picked each other's engravings. Mine has our initials, the date we met, the date of our wedding and "TBC". His has the first line of Prufrock: "Let us go then, you and I".
posted by gaspode at 9:12 AM on May 15

We worked ours out together. I think our progression was that we wanted something that felt timeless rather than in-the-moment, so somehow that led us to Latin (which we had both learned in high school). We looked in a Latin phrasebook and just read through till we found something good (pari passu, which means "with equal step"). I like the implication that neither one of us would be more important than the other in the relationship.
posted by xo at 9:24 AM on May 15

I wanted to get "One Ring To Rule Them All." We settled on nothing. :)
posted by fusinski at 9:38 AM on May 15 [1 favorite]

My boyfriend and I plan on getting "42" engraved on our rings. Our wedding date is going to be 10-10-10. We are both Hitchhiker's Guide fans.
It all works out wonderfully. I think you just have to pick something that works out for you two, and your shared interests.
posted by d13t_p3ps1 at 9:44 AM on May 15

What about your nicknames for each other?
posted by radioamy at 9:47 AM on May 15

I vote for "Put it back on". After we were married, my husband was constantly taking his ring off and playing with it, to the point I actually threatened to glue it on :)
posted by geeky at 10:01 AM on May 15

Hah, I love "OMG WTF"! Humor is the best. Definitely choose words that mean something to both of you. Things you've said to one another, bits of poetry that you both are familiar with, little phrases from songs you both like. Shakespeare is good if you're both crazy about Shakespeare and you find something that fits.

My husband and I kept our engravings secret until the day of the wedding. We got a little competitive with it, scouring books and listening to old music. It was a sweet moment for me after the ceremony when he said "oh, I almost forgot!", took off his new ring, and read what I had put there. And then I read what he put on my ring. Smooches ensued.

I second the suggestion to have it done by hand because machine engraving can sometimes look, well, like a machine did it.
posted by vewystwange at 10:22 AM on May 15

Like Radioamy suggests, mine has my wife's pet name for me, and hers has my pet name for her.
posted by Hogshead at 10:35 AM on May 15

my wife & i seriously dated & just before getting married (or decided to do so) saw the movie "Ghost"... We each put 'DITTO' in our rings... along with the date. There was a substantial amount of meaning for us...as just before, she was in a horrible car accident, obviously survived, but made us appreciate life & how fragile it is...

Whatever you choose, make it more meaningful than funny, (unless your relationship is primarily based around humor), as later in life you'll think it's kinda corny.

(btw we just celebrated our 17th anniversary)
posted by foodybat at 11:48 AM on May 15

We used a quote from a great song by our favorite band, Barenaked Ladies. My ring is engraved with 'If you call...' and his is engraved with 'I will answer.'
posted by LightMayo at 11:58 AM on May 15 [1 favorite]

Do either of you remember what the first movie is you saw together? How about a quote from that?
posted by Kattullus at 12:00 PM on May 15

We didn't get ours engraved right away because money was super tight. After we'd been married a year or so, we took them back to the jeweller and got them engraved. We chose 'happy ever after' because that's what every day feels like.
posted by happyturtle at 12:17 PM on May 15

My husband and I were married outdoors at one of our favorite spots in the world. We had the GPS coordinates of our special remote location engraved on the bands.
posted by FuzzyVerde at 12:23 PM on May 15 [2 favorites]

Wow, I feel so boring! We just went with the wedding date, but that has actually come in handy on more than one occasion as a quick anniversary reminder. (The month and day are easy to remember, it's those pesky years that one loses track of!)
posted by platinum at 1:58 PM on May 15

If you can't think of something that's meaningful, then consider not engraving anything on it. A plain wedding band is pretty meaningful all by itself. Why mess it up with something you don't feel strongly about? (Same advice goes for matching tattoos, btw.)

That said -- in hindshight, the date of the wedding is a good one for the guy's ring. Definitely helps at anniversary time. (Other non-sentimental options: Blood type, SS #, and/or return email address. You never know...)
posted by turducken at 2:21 PM on May 15

Seconding "Put it back on!" with the addition that my wife and I do have this actually engraved on our rings, and it makes me happy every time I look at it (and then put it back on).
posted by range at 3:35 PM on May 15

We met online, so we put each others' e-mail address in ours. It also works for helping us recover the ring if one gets lost.
posted by parilous at 4:28 PM on May 15

Slight derail, but it's a nice story: My friend is a typographer, and so he wanted the engraving on the outside of the rings, in carefully-chosen masculine and feminine fonts. After a demoralising few days schlepping round Sydney's jewellers (him: "what typefaces can I use?" them: "uh... well the g goes like this" *draws a g in biro*), he heard of a guy who hand-engraved rings, and went to meet him.

They got on very well, spending a couple of hours in small-talk. The ring guy said 'yeah, I engrave type on the outside. In fact, a couple of years ago, I had a very strange request. A woman came in and requested 5 copies of the same ring design, in various different sizes. The design had a strange lettering. I looked at it, and said to her "is that elvish?". She said "yes, it is. We're making a little film over in New Zealand, it's based on the Lord of the Rings".'

So that is the story of how my friend's wedding rings were forged in the same fire as THE ONE RING (all 5 of them).
posted by cogat at 4:32 PM on May 15 [3 favorites]

8 hours later, I just noticed that I've inadvertently tried to out myself in the question. I meant "fiancee" not "fiance". Thank you for so much good advice, and good examples.
posted by roofus at 5:57 PM on May 15

My wife and I liked Robert Frost's The Master Speed, and being outdoorsy and birdwatchers we engraved "wing to wing" on mine and "oar to oar" on hers.
posted by DakotaPaul at 6:07 PM on May 15 [1 favorite]

The way we thought about it - the engravings weren't really for us, but for our great grandkids. Also, wedding rings are gifts to each other.

We went with a simple "PG to VS - June 25, 1995" and "VS to PG - June 25, 1995"... The initials hopefully let the great-great-grandkids know whose rings they were, and "Oh cool, they were married way back in 1995! - I bet they didn't even have flying cars back then!"

--Phil
posted by Philbo at 7:02 AM on May 16

Late, I am, but I wanted to share ours.

My now husband and I had dated many years ago and had a fairly terrible, fight-filled relationship. Ten years pass and we find ourselves back together. We agreed to fight fair this go around, and things have been pretty great.

When it came time to engrave the rings, we decided on "No knives" for mine, and "No guns" for his. Not that our fights were ever physical, much less with weapons, but it serves as a silly reminder for us to be kind, even in anger.
posted by thebrokedown at 8:45 PM on May 16

Do either of you remember what the first movie is you saw together? How about a quote from that?

yikes, the first movie we saw together was "Team America"

Promise me you'll never die...
..and I'll fuck you right now.
posted by desjardins at 6:55 PM on June 18