Three Year Anniversary!
Stéphanie and I had our three year anniversary today! On January 16th 2004 we went out together for the first time. We went to see Mystic River (the first time out of many that we went to the movies) and so that date has become our anniversary date.
I had told Stéphanie that I would take the day off and that we should go downtown to do some shopping… but I hadn’t told her that I wanted to shop for rings with her, engagement rings! :-) Yes, this is it — I’ve asked Stéphanie to marry me and she said yes!!
We visited five shops and got somewhat disappointing service in all but the first: the shop assistant in Hingelberg really knew what she was doing and spend a lot of time educating us about the sizes, heights, widths, and shapes of the rings. I had never been wearing rings, so I more or less thought that a ring was a ring… But no, there were a lot of little things that the shop assistant could tell us that we never would have seen ourselves, such that we both need rings with a bit of rising on the side since none of us have particular wide knuckles compared to the width of the fingers… How would we have known that? :-)
We spend quite some time discussing the color of the gold — we both want a golden ring. There’s the “normal” yellow color, but we could also get a pink or rose color. To better see the color difference she urged us to take two rings and go outside to judge them in the natural light… we could easily have run away :-)
In the shop I felt like what I would expect to feel if I went to a tailor: the assistant seemed competent and knew what looked good and what didn’t. It was a bit strange but also very encouraging to hear the shop assistant and her manager quickly decide that this or that ring was correct and that this or that was wrong for me. And more importantly, it made sense when they explained to me why this or that ring was good or bad :-)
After having figured out the dimensions for our rings she wrote it all down on a card and said that we could now think a bit about it and see what kind of collections we would find in other shops around town. Somewhat strange idea I thought, but very customer friendly. But maybe she knew what the other shops had to offer…
Because, after the first shop it went downhill: the other shops had an ugly two-color design and some plain rings from loveDsign. The shop assistants simply pulled out a box with rings, ordered by kind of profile and width. I guess there were 6 rows and 10 columns, making for some 60 sets of rings. The assistant apparently expected us to pick a set just like that. That might seem simple, but after coming from a shop where we got a throughout guidance it seemed like very poor customer service to simply present the rings and then say nothing further.
After having been to four shops and been disappointed every time we got rather tired of those mass-produced rings and the presentation of them. Sure, they are cheaper than the hand-made rings from Hingelberg, but it was like looking at a Fiat after looking at a Ferrari… The Hingelberg set with 18 carat was twice as expensive as the other rings with 14 carat. Both sets were expensive, but I think it is acceptable considering that we plan to use the engagement rings as our wedding rings too, and thus use them the rest of our lives.
Finally we went shopping for shoes — Stéphanie’s favorite shopping item :-) and had dinner at Raadhuus Kaféen which is a very cozy restaurant with good traditional Danish food. This was a super day!
Yesterday 
I’ve already used the money… for another donation: I’m now a member of the Free Software Foundation, better known as FSF. I ![[FSF Associate Member]](/images/fsf-button.png){kind=small}