Wedding rings are not only a symbol of love but also pricey jewelry that demands attentive care, which is understandable given that this ornament will be with us forever. Whether you wear your wedding band around your neck or on your wrist, it will lose its original appearance with time.
This post will go over how to properly care for your wedding rings while keeping their characteristics in mind. We will learn how to cope with scratches, fading, stone loosening, and other unpleasant problems with such an essential piece of jewelry.
Wedding rings: What it is and why they are being used
It symbolizes the promise of eternal love, devotion, and fidelity. It is a kind of material embodiment of the wedding vow. The romantic attitude towards wedding rings finally took shape only by the eighteenth century.
The well-known golden ring appeared during the decline of the Roman Empire only in the III-IV centuries. Wedding rings in Rome were worn only by women. Men began to wear rings much later. In the 9th century, Pope Nicholas I the Great, the most significant pontiff of the Carolingian era, who did a lot in marriage law, introduced the right to use rings Christians.
From a particular time, it began to serve as a sign of “fidelity, constancy, and integrity of love.” By the 13th century, the exchange of wedding rings had become an integral part of marriages and weddings. The wedding ring symbolizes the union of two hearts, and not a single wedding can do without it. In some countries, the wedding ring was so important that even if the groom did not have money, he rented the ring for the duration of the marriage.
When the Middle Ages ended, various inscriptions on wedding rings came into fashion. Poems and romantic phrases, including the words “faith” and “hope,” become extremely popular and are very often engraved on rings.
Interestingly, the betrothal ceremony was initially more important than the wedding itself. The marriage was considered just a simple completion of a successful engagement. The bride received one ring for the engagement and another for the wedding.
The appearance of two rings on the bride has led to numerous interpretations of how the rings are worn. Some rules stated that a woman should wear a wedding ring below the engagement ring, thereby placing it closer to her heart. According to other rules, you should put the wedding ring above the engagement ring to maintain an engaging atmosphere in the marriage. Some people think that you should wear only a wedding ring.
What do wedding rings mean to Catholics?
The Romans hold the position of being the first to use rings to determine the social status of people and marriage partners. During the betrothal ceremony, the groom presented the bride’s family with a simple iron ring to symbolize his devotion and financial solvency.
This meeting was devoted to negotiations, where they discussed the meal conditions. At first, the betrothal ceremony was more important than the marriage ceremony, simply fulfilling a betrothal obligation. The ring became part of the Catholic wedding ceremony only a little later in Christian history.
Why care for rings and how to do it right?
Before you learn how to care for wedding rings, you need to figure out why you should do it. Indeed, practice shows that many do not pay attention to this issue and do not understand the whole essence, although the answer is obvious and lies right on the surface.
Every day we perform many routine tasks: clean, wash dishes and cook food. At the same time, our ring is on the finger, which is why it suffers a lot of damage, which becomes noticeable in a short time. These are scratches, deformations, tarnishing, discoloration, loosening of stones, clogging of dirt, and other unpleasant problems that the proper care of wedding rings solves.
If you want to keep their beauty for a long time, you need to take good care of your rings. Also, you need to understand that everything is individual and depends directly on the type of metal and the texture of the jewelry. There are also issues such as enlarging an engagement ring, restoring a deformed shape, getting rid of scratches, and re-plating rhodium on white gold. You cannot do all this at home. In addition, it is worth contacting a jewelry master about once a year for a jewelry cleaning service.
Avoid regular contact with damage factors
However, if you know how to care for the ring, trips to the workshop can be less frequent. First of all, you need to be careful when wearing them. It is a general rule for all jewelry. When working around the house, when using household chemicals and cosmetics, or before going to the gym, where hands come into contact with iron, it is recommended to remove the rings.
If you can’t regularly remove the jewelry, try to keep the ring in contact with materials and substances that can adversely affect it as little as possible. It is important to remember the individual characteristics of precious metals and how to clean them at home.
Regular washing of the ring
There are different types of wedding rings and materials that they are made from. Below are tips on cleaning some of the popular materials, such as:
Yellow gold wedding ring: To do this, you can take a very soft toothbrush that does not leave small scratches behind, with which you will clean the jewelry, and prepare a special solution by mixing soapy water and ammonia in equal proportions. You can soak heavily soiled items overnight. After cleaning, be sure to rinse the ring with running water.
White gold wedding ring: White gold is even more susceptible to negative influences, so wedding rings made of this metal need to be cleaned more often. You can use the same solution of soapy water and ammonia to do this. In addition, such jewelry has a layer of rhodium, which eventually wears out and wears off. You can restore it only in a jewelry workshop.
Diamond and other precious stones: These types are alluring, but this stone is very selective and needs to be handled with extreme care. In addition to metal changes in such jewelry, stains on the stone, loss of luster, discoloration and tarnishing, chips, scratches, and loosening can threaten. And because the rules of care are much stricter. First, you should store such rings separately from all other jewelry, especially keeping them away from jewelry.
Silver wedding rings: Newlyweds rarely choose this metal, but there are still devoted fans of it. Silver is a very malleable material, but it often begins to darken. It is affected by humidity, as well as contact with many substances. However, you can clean it much easier than gold. To do this, you need ordinary soda or tooth powder. Regularly wipe the product with the selected product, and then it will last you much longer.
Why do you have to adequately care for your wedding ring?
They have special memories attached to them. Especially if they are commemorating something as unique as your wedding, hence, you might want to preserve the memory of it for a long time which can only be made possible when you maintain it properly.
