There was a letter in the recent issue of dwell and they recommended some people. Sorry, that's about all I can recall.

i'm sorry, i know i am turning into a hardcore cynic about his whole architecture thing, but why do we have to add the prefix 'archi-' to every other word in the dictionary to make it our own? its like being 'trekkies' for architecture

Maybe you need to archi-check yourself before you archi-wreck yourself.

dillup. ->
just trying to lighten the atmosphere around here with a headline people would notice.

relax.

My sculptor husband sculpted (in jeweler's wax) my engagement ring to "look" like a forefinger and thumb holding up a "diamond". We had it cast in silver, total cost about 30 bucks. It's absolutely wonderful and one of a kind. We then had - as you suggested - a local art school jewelry teacher make our wedding bands - mine nests with the engagement band, which was done by heating up the ring and pressing a chunk of wax against it to make a mold. Cast in gold, total cost of the wedding band was about $175. But I'm so proud of these rings that I scoff at enormous rocks from Tiffany.

If you want a singular piece, find an art student or teacher and design it in concert with that person. Not too expensive and worth so much more than you pay. And just loads of romance potential, too...

a.g. are you trying to archi-flex? you don't want to eff with my tectonics.

lovely, now we have to know all the domestics as well.
And "And just loads of romance potential"

has some interesting jewelry, if only for ideas. They have a diamond ring that's new, worth having a look.

I like the Konzuk rings, but, I do like having the option of having a doorknob of a diamond set in there, and I don't think that setting is appropriate for anything larger than shown.

I don't know where you are located, but these two spots in NYC allow you to shop online:

Niwaka makes some insanely beautiful rings, if you like things a little organic:

http://www.niwaka.com/us/index.html

And if you don't enjoy the organic, stuart moore is a very cool boutique in soho (it's across the street, roughly, from the Apple store) He's a got a collection of several designers showing work in different styles, a little more variety than the above jeweler.

http://www.stuartmoore.com/

oh yeah, CONGRATULATIONS!!!

dont buy a ring. doesnt mean more than something personalized.

designed own ring for the wifey. 'twas an experience. worth more than any fist sized diamond out there. used platinum, and a fire agat stone.

theres the wax person, the platinum person, then the rock person- all of them have to come together on your design. the most important believe it or not is the wax person. in nyc, not hard to find them- especially in the diamond district. but dont let any of them tell you "oh- well that cant be done" cauze it more than likely can be done...

gluck

Try a local independant jewler. Some friends of mine that got married last summer had some independant guy in St. Paul MN build their wedding bands from a quick sketch they had put together. He was glad to do it and they were very pleased, reccomending this guy to everyone. Your mall shops and big names are a dead end for anything not in an catalog.

I wenr down to a local jewller who had won a few awards but had some clean and cool looking stuff. I went through what I wanted to do and my budget
( and it wasn't three months salary as debeers would suggest ) and she loved it. Had my ring designed to match and they still look great after eleven yrs. I was inspired by scarpa at the time and still am but the rings don't look old and have worn well.

The wife's was a little heavy initially so we had to make a little adjustment, not a huge rock, (would have been bigger but I had an opportunity to go Heli skiing at the time and had to adjust the budget accordingly )

we stopped by the pawnshop, had the dude dump out a half-gallon bag of hawked rings and sorted for 2 minutes till we found a plain gold one that fit. total cost. $30 i think... i like to think it was prised off some bloke's cold dead hand.

Just out of curiosity, how do y'all deal with wearing a big rock on your hand... EVERY DAY FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE? Doesn't it get annoying when you are working on stuff? If I ever get married I hope we will get matching (small, hideable, non-day-job-prohibitive) tattoos.

this is what most girls think when it comes to commitment:

. . ."precious, eeeeaahh, my precious. . ."

LOL... anatomical gift!

this is an old thread, with a semi-relevant new question.

I have been asked to do a reading for a friends wedding in a few weeks time. I am struggling for something appropriate. By appropriate I mean something that's not a Shakespeare Sonnet, nor a Henry Rollins poem.

Any poet/author/source that might be good? Any similar experiences?

Hmmm, diabase, let me think on this one. Do you and your friend share a love of any particular book/author that might have something appropriate?

I would be very happy if someone read this poem by cummings at my wedding, should I have one:

somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

Very nice dgg.

Um, now that I think abou it, they are huge Jeff Buckley fans. As well as Jack Kerouac et al, the Dalai Llama, etc. Truth is, I have been so busy, I have not had time to think about it.... there might be some clues there...

man, that poem makes the excerpt from song of solomon that we had read at our wedding sound like a kevin federline rap lyric. thanks so much for sharing it.

apropos of wedding rings, any ring can do if you think about it. my wife and i have matching wedding rings of titanium that we found at a craft show. not a ducks-american flags-and-print-letters-with-dots-at-the-end-of-the-strokes craft fair but one with REAL craftsmen and artists and artisans. anyhoo.

we were walking by, we looked at the rings, we said, "hmm...let's see those rings." whether it was coincidence or fate the craftsman had exactly two rings of that version -- one in my size, one in my (then) fiancee's size. total cost $250. AND the guy lived in el paso, which to us was kind of a sign since we were living in chicago and were desperately homesick for texas.

dgg, one of my all-time fave poems. good choice for a wedding, i never thought of that.

guess it's better by far than rilke's "you who never" or my other cummings fave, "i like your body when it is with my body"!

What about cumming's 'I carry your heart with me'?

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

archi-married rhymes with archi-buried...

Vado.....I'm an Architect and I'm married to an Architect...She picked out the rings....silver squares...not alot of money cause we were dirt poor, but damn people are always asking me about it.

depends what your accent is like. If I was talking to you vado, I doubt you could underatand what I was saying.....

it's pretty funny that e e cummings poems have come up on this thread. our wedding invitations, all print materials, and the ceremony itself were all chock full of 'em.

our wedding bands are simple pipe bands in platinum (chosen because it's soft and gets marked up on the outside but stays shiny on the inside). jenny had 'one times one' engraved inside mine after one of the cummings poems:

we're anything brighter than even the sun
(we're everything greater
than books
might mean)
we're everyanything more than believe
(with a spin
leap
alive we're alive)
we're wonderful one times one

your body like a searchlight
my poverty revealed
i would like to try your charity
until you say "now you must try my greed"
and everything depends upon
how near you sleep to me
take this longing from my tongue
whatever useless things these hands have done
let me see your beauty broken down
like you would do
for one you love...

any poem from billy collins would have to go over well...my particular choice would be the similes for women....

Might be my ignorance, or possibly my non-americanness, but I've never heard of e.e cummings. Steven, is that a common thing - to incorporate e.e cummings work into the 'documentation' [for want of a better word] of a marriage?

I'm wondering if his work would feature on a regular basis in a NZ marriage... I don't know.

diabase, I just watched that movie with Cameron Diaz and Shirley Maclean called 'In Her Shoes'. There is a wedding scene and 'i carry your heart with me' was read. I think you need to either go-fish or invite ms. diaz to the wedding...

hmmm. Did it go down well?

as far as we knew it was not common. he's just a favorite of ours. he plays with words, punctuation, grammar, syllables, and sounds as if he was channeling jazz onto paper. the fact that he came up in this discussion was surprising and made me smile.

the front of the invitation was:

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than the rain is wet
more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky

Steven,
Very nice. And I'm glad i learnt about him today. Very nice work.

And I doubt that many of the people in attendence will have seen the movie. And if so, not remember it too well.

d

you can't go wrong with zimmy (though I might pick and choose a couple select verses)

Wedding song:

I love you more than ever, more than time and more than love,
I love you more than money and more than the stars above,
Love you more than madness, more than waves upon the sea,
Love you more than life itself, you mean that much to me.

Ever since you walked right in, the circle's been complete,
I've said goodbye to haunted rooms and faces in the street,
To the courtyard of the jester which is hidden from the sun,
I love you more than ever and I haven't yet begun.

You breathed on me and made my life a richer one to live,
When I was deep in poverty you taught me how to give,
Dried the tears up from my dreams and pulled me from the hole,
Quenched my thirst and satisfied the burning in my soul.

You gave me babies one, two, three, what is more, you saved my life,
Eye for eye and tooth for tooth, your love cuts like a knife,
My thoughts of you don't ever rest, they'd kill me if I lie,
I'd sacrifice the world for you and watch my senses die.

The tune that is yours and mine to play upon this earth,
We'll play it out the best we know, whatever it is worth,
What's lost is lost, we can't regain what went down in the flood,
But happiness to me is you and I love you more than blood.

It's never been my duty to remake the world at large,
Nor is it my intention to sound a battle charge,
'Cause I love you more than all of that with a love that doesn't bend,
And if there is eternity I'd love you there again.

Oh, can't you see that you were born to stand by my side
And I was born to be with you, you were born to be my bride,
You're the other half of what I am, you're the missing piece
And I love you more than ever with that love that doesn't cease.

You turn the tide on me each day and teach my eyes to see,
Just bein' next to you is a natural thing for me
And I could never let you go, no matter what goes on,
'Cause I love you more than ever now that the past is gone.

diabase

i feel your pain. i am marrying my best friends the day after my birthday. finding something that is appropriate to them, and that is the key, is rather difficult. my friends are very happy and simple people. no shakespere or heady poems here. they are not religious. there is also a large age gap between them. some 20+ years between them. the wedding will be informal and small. this is what i have at this time.

Little trip to heaven on the wings of your love
Banana moon is shining in the sky
I feel like I’m in heaven when you’re with me
I know that I’m in heaven when you smile
Though were stuck here on the ground
I got something that I’ve found, and it’s you

I don’t need to take no trip to outer space
All I have to do is look in your face
And before I know it I’m in orbit around you
Thanking my lucky stars that I found you
When I see your constellation, you’re my inspiration
And it’s you

You’re my North Star when I’m lost and feeling blue
You’re my sun that’s breaking through, it’s true
And all the other stars seem dim around you
I thank my lucky stars that I found you
When I see your smiling face
I know nothing’s gonna take your place
And it’s you, and it’s you, and it’s you.

Tom Waits, '73

I have to say, we really are quite the mushy bunch... ha.

Steven - when it's time for me to plan a wedding, I might have to steal a few of your ideas. I like that you "branded" through poetry placement.

Oh, here are Postal Service lyrics that I think might make for a nice reading (I like the Iron and Wine cover better, it's more wistful, I like wistful)

Such Great Heights

I am thinking it's a sign that the freckles
In our eyes are mirror images and when
We kiss they're perfectly aligned
And I have to speculate that God himself
Did make us into corresponding shapes like
Puzzle pieces from the clay
True, it may seem like a stretch, but
Its thoughts like this that catch my troubled
Head when you're away when I am missing you to death
When you are out there on the road for
Several weeks of shows and when you scan
The radio, I hope this song will guide you home

They will see us waving from such great
Heights, 'come down now,' they'll say
But everything looks perfect from far away,
'come down now,' but we'll stay...

I tried my best to leave this all on your
Machine but the persistent beat it sounded
Thin upon listening
That frankly will not fly. you will hear
The shrillest highs and lowest lows with
The windows down when this is guiding you home

we tried to go overboard with the cummings, even:
when jonatha brooke was still part of 'the story', they put 'love is more thicker than forget' to music - well, really it was a capella.

we tried to get singers to perform this but all of the people we approached (professional singers!) thought the song was too difficult. if i hadn't been otherwise engaged - ahem - i would have done it.

it wasn't all poetry, however. the wedding began with a trumpeter from churchill downs, in full regalia, blowing the call to the post.

diabase, cummings is amazingly sensual and tender; the only thing is that I think he'd be better to include in print than to read out loud. The punctuation and flow are things that sort of make reading him much stronger as a private, personal experience with the printed words. I don't know how to explain that well. I guess I mean the poems wouldn't be as good read aloud.

The Billy Collins suggestion was a good one, check him out.

Yeah, my partner feels that the poem is quite intimate, and whether I would feel comfortable reading it publicly. I think that I would, but would need to read it correctly.

I was actually thinking of presenting them with the poem on a small canvas [5x5inch] as part of a wedding present, so that they can have it with them, hang it on their wall etc. Or maybe have it on the table thing that you have when you sign the documentation. Then when peoiple view the documentation [do they do that at weddings? - I'm pretty inexperienced], they can see the poem and put the syntax and reading together....

Its in a garden, so its not that formal...

Didn't find this post till after I designed the ring. Gave it to her a few days ago. It was a really fun/stressful project but it turned out amazing. Everyone that sees it goes nuts. Now i'm going to start on mine.