The Mark of Marriage

There will be tons of things that change for us because we get married. Some things are easy to think of: Keith will move into Jennifer's house, Jennifer will take Keith's last name, and we will wear wedding rings. Other things will be harder to notice: we will share financial decisions, we will work together on projects, and we will collect traditions that mark time together.

Today, we chose our wedding rings. Something seemed official about that, and Jennifer thought about it on her way home tonight. Wedding rings will mark us as "married" in a way that nothing else will. When people want to know if we're married, they can look at our hands and never have to ask the question. When those hard-to-notice things aren't apparent, there will be the easy-to-spot wedding rings, whether we're together or separate.

When Jennifer and Keith talked about Jennifer's engagement ring, they also talked about their wedding rings. It is important to Jennifer that their wedding rings have the same design and color. Since she didn't feel strongly about either color of engagement ring, the color of the engagement ring was chosen to match the color of wedding ring that Keith wanted to wear. Today, in choosing our wedding rings, we accomplished the task of getting rings with the same design. There's nothing elaborate about our rings at all, but when we see them, we will remember that another person has a ring that was intentionally chosen to look the same.

Jennifer wondered about the tradition and meaning of wedding rings, and she found this website.

When you see a wedding ring (on your own hand or another's hand), it'll be the easiest thing to notice. But, there is a lot more to the story.