Happy Wedding Wednesday!

I am so excited to be this week’s guest writer on The Full Time Bride! Ashley asked me if I was interested in writing a blog post this week and of course I said YES. Before I get into my post, let me start by formally introducing myself. My name is Sydney and I am a ‘full-time bride”, full-time student, and full-time dog mommy! My fiancé and I met in JUNIOR HIGH and started a serious relationship our senior year of high school. We’ve been together for close to five years and known each other for 10! Because we met at such a young age, we both have been able to watch each other grow into the people we are today and I would not trade that for anything. I love every day I get to grow with my best friend. Okay, enough of the sappy stuff, let’s talk ring shopping!!

From the time you’re a little girl you dream of one day getting married! So it’s easy to jump ahead when you find the person that could be the one. When you do find the person that you want to spend forever with, you will probably start talking about things like moving in together, getting a dog (or two ☺), and eventually getting married! If you’re like me, you knew EXACTLY what kind of ring you want down to the diamond cut and carat size.

So how do you go about bringing up ring shopping?

First, you want to make sure you’re not being pushy when bringing up the idea of wanting to go ring shopping. In my situation, I started by showing Nick pictures of rings that I loved. Constant Instagram tagging, but I never asked him to go to the ring store. One day we were at the mall and Nick asked me if I wanted to go into the ring store and I immediately got butterflies! I think it is so important for your significant other to initiate going to the store because the minute you start pushing them, is the minute they start feeling overwhelmed and it actually can push them away. So my first tip is to give your bf/gf the opportunity to initiate the shopping if they know how specific you are.

Secondly, let talk budget! I think the most important conversation to have with your bf/gf is BUDGET! The general rule of thumb is one to two month’s salary, but times have changed. If budget is not something your bf/gf is comfortable discussing with you, and some aren’t, then he/she and the sales associate will have a quick private conversation so the associate is aware of what to be respectful of. Ultimately you know your significant other’s financial situation so you should be conscious of his finances also, even if it’s not something they want to discuss with you.

Lastly, go into the store with an open mind! Even if you think you are set on a certain style, be open to different styles! Once you start trying rings on, your opinions could completely change because it is so different seeing a ring on YOUR hand versus an Instagram models hand. I was always set on an emerald cut solitaire ring. I hated the thought of halos and I thought I wanted a plain band so my diamond would stand out. The sales associate brought out two types of emerald cut diamond rings. One was a solitaire and one was an emerald cut diamond with a halo and a pave band. And guess what? I hated the way the solitaire looked on my hand and I ended up loving the extra sparkle that the ring with the halo gave! So my piece of advice here is to try on everything! Try every cut, shape, and color that you think you could like because you might end up falling in love with something totally different than what you envisioned for yourself!

I have so many more tips and advice to share, I could go on forever! Getting engaged is such an exciting and monumental time in BOTH of your lives! Enjoy the moment! Thank you all for reading my post and I hope to get to share more with you guys some day!

Thank you again to Sydney for taking over this week! Hope you all enjoyed today’s post from my guest writer. See ya’ll for #PutARingOnItFridays and stay tuned to my IG Stories this weekend for my Bridal Shower!!