"My frisbee that Josh had thrown me to ask me on our first date back in October was lying on the ground in the pathway. I totally walked past it and didn't even notice it so Jordan kept trying to tell me about it. She just kept saying "Look! There's a disk on the ground! Whitney look! It's a disk." She said it several times before I turned around to realize that it was MY frisbee. It was then that I noticed the guy behind the camera was Josh's dad and I started to put two and two together as Josh appeared from around the corner.
I about died.
Josh was supposed to be at Target.
Josh led me to the middle of the stage in the amphitheater.
He got down on one knee and told me he loved me.
He asked me to marry him.
I said YES!"
I wrote that ☝🏼 in 2018 just after my then boyfriend, Josh, asked me to be his wife (read our full proposal story here). It was an incredible experience and one that I've looked back on lots throughout our married life.
Today, I want to write about some of the details that helped my husband and me get to that point. After all, what would a proposal be without a ring?
My Ring Search
Our search for an engagement ring began like many others do - with a trip to the mall. Once Josh and I were certain about getting married we started looking at different jewelers and ring stores. The University Place Mall in Orem was where we started.
At the time there were several jewelry stores to choose from at the mall. We started at Morgan Jewelers simply because it was the first one we came across. We had no idea that we would get a remarkable level of service there and that we would eventually decide on one of the rings shown to us there, but I'll come back to this experience later.
After a great experience at Morgan we walked across the Mall hallway to a place called Schwab (no longer there). We also looked at Kay, Zales, Jared, and one other place - all located at the Orem mall. None of these experiences were particularly great and the rings available in our college student budget were limited at best (and sometimes downright ugly!).
Why We Bought From Morgan Jewelers
Now back to Morgan. As I mentioned, we had no idea or intention in buying a ring from the first place we went in, but after searching for hours through the various shops that night we knew we had been given a wonderful experience with the sales person at Morgan.
Here's how it went:
As we approached we were welcomed by the friendliest saleswoman. She was polite and happy to help us out. We let her know our approximate budget and she began showing us only rings that fit within that budget. They had loads of options.
I had a hard time figuring out what I liked just looking through the cases so she started pulling out the ring options and allowing me to try them on.
Initially, I thought I wanted a rose-gold band. After all, it was on-trend and they looked great on Pinterest. But, after spending some time with the sales associate (Sorry I have completely forgotten your name!) and seeing how various bands looked on my hand I came to the conclusion that white gold just looked better on me.
The other thing I loved about my experience was the associate's ability to help me figure out what I liked. Rather than just showing me five or ten different options at once she took the time to show two different options at a time and ask me "Which do you like better?"
If you're an indecisive person like me this can be very be very helpful! Narrowing my options down to two rings at a time gave me a lot of clarity in selecting the right one.
Lastly, there was no pressure to buy on the spot. The woman we worked with was patient and was perfectly happy to write down the info we needed on a card with her name on it so we could explore other options there.
Sales reps at the other locations that night proved to be unhelpful, pushy, and borderline rude. If you're preparing to get engaged in Utah, I highly recommend Morgan Jewelers at University Place in Orem. And now that most of those other ring stores are no longer at the Mall, Morgan has moved into that larger space where Schwab Jewelers used to be. Check them out and let me know how it goes!
You can also find a full list of the best engagement ring stores in Utah here!