The story of my engagement ring is not one that is straight forward. The engagement process all happened when I was in London. A's family came over to my house, and formally asked my parents for my hand in marriage. Even A himself wasn't there for this occasion. Both sides talked, got to know one another and set dates for the wedding. Gifts were exchanged and my mother-in-law to be at the time gifted my mother with my engagement ring as a sign of our families uniting.
A went to the jewellers several days before to pick out a ring. He would send me photos of potential rings but my brief was not complicated - the ring just had to be simple. No over the top embellishments and the rock itself shouldn't be too big or too sparkly. In the end, he picked a beautiful ring, the band splits into two, intertwining into each other as it approached and held up the little sparkly diamond. Needless to say, it was stunning and very much suited our taste.
After the engagement ceremony, my mom had the ring in Malaysia. The problem was, I wanted to wear the ring, I impatiently wanted to wear the ring on my finger so badly. Thus, the convoluted "get Ayne's ring to London" plan was hatched. My housemate had a friend who was due to fly over to London in several days time. My housemate and the potential courier were close friends. So I asked her to ask him if he could transport my ring through international borders, to which he surprisingly agreed!
So from my mom, the ring was passed on to A who passed it on to his sister, who then passed it on to her colleague, who also happened to be my housemate's dad. Then, he passed the little box on to my housemate's friend, the said courier. After much anticipation and praying that it wouldn't get lost in transit, the ring arrived intact on British soil. The courier passed it on to my housemate at university, and she finally brought back the coveted prize back to our flat.
I held the box in my hand, and thought, how strange it is that in it lies the evidence of my engagement. I was someone's fiancé, A's fiancé. I slowly opened the box and was in awe at how beautiful the ring was - I was without a doubt, a lucky girl. Although it was tradition for the mother-in-law-to-be to slip the ring on to the bride's finger, in her absence, I asked my other housemate to act in her place. After a little prayer, she knighted me officially engaged after slipping the ring on to my unlady-like finger, and we celebrated joyfully.
One problem though, the ring was a tad tight. Obvious effort was needed to slip the ring on and off. And after sleeping with it that night, numbness around the ring began to become apparent. But I didn't care - I had my very own engagement ring! I did measure my ring size here in London using European measurements. Perhaps after it was converted using Asian parameters, something went amiss. In the short term, the euphoria from being engaged masked my apparent discomfort. But in the long term, several weeks later, I brought the ring to a jewellers lane located in Central London and left it to the experts to resize. Now it fits pretty perfectly on my finger. And there it will stay until a possible day where I get old and my finger, filled with additional fat from age, would no longer fit the ring. And I would need to visit the same jeweller embarrassingly asking for another resize.
Thus is the story of my engagement ring - goes to show that nothing in life is exempt from complications.
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