“I couldn’t really think of life in any other way. There’s only one way to go from there.”
Adam & Will
Will and Adam knew they wanted to get engaged, it was only a question of when. ‘I couldn’t really imagine life going any other way’, Will says. But planning the engagement had one challenge. ‘A lot of engagement rings are quite dainty and feminine and I wanted something a bit more masculine’.
It’s no secret that traditions around marriage, including rings and who proposes to who, are built on the notion that a man and woman will be getting married. Along with that assumption comes all of the outdated notions about love and life that queer couples are trying to change for modern times.
‘The engagement ring market is mostly geared towards women’, Adam agrees, ‘so it’s hard to find a masculine ring that’s also quite expressive like Will’s is’. He says that even though they had to shop around quite a bit to find something that felt right for Will’s sense of self and style, they didn’t get discouraged. ‘What we liked about Taylor & Hart is that the rings are completely customisable, you can design what you want’, he says.
Will says that he’d always jokingly told Adam he had five years to propose or he’d be out, but never actually expected him to be the one to ask the question. Adam planned the proposal in secret, coming up with the ring design mostly on his own but also drawing from casual conversations they’d had together in front of jewellery shop windows.
The first thing Adam chose for the ring was the metal, having been inspired while on a recent holiday together. The couple visited the Dolaucothi gold mines in Wales, where all the UK’s rose gold comes from. This memory of adventure together along with the warm hue of the metal made rose gold a natural starting point for the design.
To contrast the pink tones of the band, Adam chose a green emerald as his centre gemstone. ‘I chose emeralds because they’re his favourite colour. I came up with a basic design and Kate, our consultant, brought the rest to life and made exactly what I had pictured, it was great’. The ring is finished with a Celtic-inspired design engraved along the shank.
