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 Something
Old
As
you build your future, heirlooms can be a beautiful connection
to the past—when handled right
By
Darryl McGrath
When
Prince William finally asked his eternally patient girlfriend
Kate Middleton if she’d like to be Queen of England one day,
it’s a fair bet that more people were looking at the engagement
ring than the smiling faces of the happy couple.
That’s
because the Titanic-sized sapphire on Middleton’s left hand
had belonged to William’s mother—the late, ill-fated Princess
Diana. The collective reaction of those old enough to remember
Diana’s brief and tragic reign as Princess of Wales wasn’t
difficult to guess: “Yikes.”
But William, who actually looks like he’s in love and who
already appears to be far more astute at dealing with the
public than the rest of his family, evidently realized what
everyone was thinking. And he had a ready answer: The gift
of Diana’s engagement ring was his way of making his mother
part of what genuinely looked like a happy occasion. (And
one quite unlike the engagement announcement of William’s
parents, when a besotted 19-year-old Diana seemed unaware
of the pained, awkward and unloving expression on her prince’s
face.)
So if the wedding of the year is going to feature an heirloom
ring, how do engaged couples whose nuptuals won’t be televised
affairs of state navigate the sometimes tricky etiquette of
jewelry and attire that belonged to someone else?
It’s common for a bride to field a few offers to wear someone
else’s wedding gown—that of a friend, a sister or even her
mother. It’s difficult to say no to someone who can’t wait
to see how their gown looks on you, and the way you handle
that request is important.
Two friends offered to lend me their wedding dresses. The
first was a one-of-a-kind two-piece boutique dress that had
looked stunning on my friend but looked awful on me—and I
was relieved when my friend agreed with that assessment. The
other dress had been worn by a friend whose marriage had ended
in a bitter divorce. I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to
figure out why she thought I would want to wear a dress
with such bad karma. Instead, I told her the gown would be
far too formal for my garden wedding.
For you married ladies who know that a newly engaged friend
or relative really does want to wear your wedding gown, make
sure it’s in good condition before you seal the deal, even
if you had it properly cleaned after you wore it. Synthetic
fabrics can yellow in just a few years; stains that survived
a dry cleaning may have darkened with time; and the larvae
of clothing moths—common in upstate New York—will eat silk
as well as wool. Check the dress before you hand it over to
the future bride, even if it’s been stored in archival-quality
acid-free packaging.
As for worn-before engagement rings: Guys—this part’s for
you. There’s a right way and a wrong way to give a woman an
engagement ring that used to belong to someone else. Be sure,
first, that your bride-to-be wants an old ring, or at least
an old stone. If she’s a minimalist and you surprise her with
an ornate antique filigree setting, you’d better hope you
went over the return policy with the jeweler. It’s safer to
be certain: A coworker of mine whose fiancé surprised her
with an antique diamond engagement ring had seen her admire
it and knew she loved it. I have another friend who knew that
her now-husband had been promised one of two central diamonds
from a pair of earrings which had been in his family since
before the Civil War. He had the stone set in a platinum band
that he helped design.
Those are the right ways to offer an heirloom ring. The wrong
way is to give a woman a family ring without getting it cleaned
and having the setting and stone checked before you pop the
question—an oversight that is at best ignorant and at worst
sloppy and lazy. Incredibly, I know someone whose fiancé gave
her an heirloom family engagement ring without doing any of
these preliminaries, and it didn’t take her long to discover
that the diamond was chipped and the setting needed repairs.
(She should have paid more attention to those early indicators,
but that’s another story.)
If you have no family heirloom to give, and you’re both OK
with a ring whose story may forever be unknown, an estate
ring from a reputable jeweler can be a unique choice. Jim
Cook, owner of Romanation Jewelers in Troy, sells both contemporary
and estate engagement rings, and says that even young couples
often choose a vintage or antique ring. Older rings are more
likely to have hand-cut diamonds in European styles that are
rarely seen in today’s machine-cut stones, Cook says.
Diamond cutters of 50, 75 and 100 years ago worked more closely
with the shape of the rough stone. The goal was to save as
much of the original stone as possible, and not to obtain
the incredible sparkle that modern diamonds offer, Cook says.
As for the often-unknown origins of an estate ring, Cook says
that he doesn’t see too many couples express angst over how
an antique or vintage ring ended up in a jewelry case. My
own wedding ring, now about a century old, came from an estate
jeweler and is set with a rose-cut diamond, a flat- bottomed
cut not often seen today. I don’t know why someone sold it,
but I like to think that its original owner would enjoy knowing
it had a happy ending. And indeed, says Cook, the back story
usually isn’t that exciting: The heirs sold grandma’s ring
under amicable circumstances because they realized that it’s
easier to divide money from the sale of jewelry than the jewelry
itself.
“I
always tell people that somebody had this stone 75 or 100
years,” says Cook. “You’re just carrying on the tradition.”
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