The Hobbit | LOTR Rings

After [almost] a month, Lou and I finally had our first date as a married couple -- can you believe that?! A month?! haha! As some of you might already know, I've been a PWD (person with disability) since a week after our wedding, and up till now I am recovering from it. So, that explains all! [further story about my being PWD will be posted later on. hehe!] Anyway, as my title says, we watched...

The Hobbit!!! (pambihira, late na nga nag first date, nanood pa ng pa-luma nang movie?! hahaha!) It was originally a "wedding date" which we planned months ago, after I saw its trailer in IMAX. I've been looking forward to this as 1) Lou and I rarely watch movies in Cinemas 2) It's IMAX therefore it must be awesome 3) It's a movie that will show THE ONE ring to rule them all. One Ring to find them ...and the ONE RING same as our wedding rings!!! haha!

I got a lil frustrated though because the ring was shown just a few times during the movie. Apparently The Hobbit is just 1/3 of the book, so the story of the ring was not introduced until perhaps the last 30 minutes of the movie. AND, the ring there still had no engravings. grr!

Nonetheless it was a great movie! After treating ourselves with that P450 IMAX viewing, plus a BAG of cheetos Jalapeno, all I said was, "SULIT, sulit talaga! I can't wait for next year!". I then asked Lou, having the same tone I had last year: "Can we watch the 2nd part on IMAX again? please...? please...?" hahaha! Because we still haven't exceeded the quota of once-a-year-imax, Lou instantly said yes. HAHA!

--
Speaking of LOTR...

Supplier Story #2: V-Gem for our Wedding Rings!

Lou is the usual groom who didn't really mind the smallest details of the wedding. Except for one thing. And he's been psyching me up for this even way before we got engaged: He wanted an LOTR wedding ring, complete with inner and outer ELVEN engraving. And -- though we all know this is impossible -- he also SERIOUSLY wanted a wedding ring that will make him INVISIBLE. gee. *roll eyes*

And so, February last year, we started the search. Finally, at a wedding expo month after that, we found V-Gem, a jewelry shop that does customized ring engravings. (In fact, they've made an LOTR ring before!) So we chose them, finalized the specs, and settled everything with Ver, their jeweler, who later on suggested to make the font "glossy", and the rest "matte" to give emphasis on the engravings. The result:

REALLY LOTR-looking wedding rings! The only difference was the actual engravings. To all you who must be wondering now what the elven engravings mean, here it is (Lou's ring is the one that has the longer text):

Also, we ended up having a usual scripty font for the inner engraving, which says "Lou ♥ Leda 01-05-2013" ...because we realized that decades from now, we might forget our own names and anniversary -- and pure elven writings wouldn't help by then. hahaha!

It was the only non-Filipiniana element in our wedding.

Because this LOTR requirement is really mandatory for Lou!

Anyway, we are really thankful that we found V-Gem! The search wasn't easy at first because the engraving we wanted is way too customized. We searched via jewelry shop-hopping in Makati and Alabang, and in Expo stalls too, but none could engrave elven writings. They can only work with "standard" fonts, or the few fonts "that the computer can do". That was really frustrating because as I told other jewelry stores, the font Tengwar is downloadable!

But V-Gem was able to do it! This is because -- as they proudly shared -- skilled Bulakenyo manual engravers are now rare, and fortunately some of them are employed in V-Gem. And so they didn't really care about the font, all they needed was our printed peg. Really AWESOME, right?! And aside from that, they have professional jewelers from Bulacan who can meet up with you via the Themes and Motifs shop, conveniently located at Makati Shangri-la Branch!

Just to make it clear - After discovering V-Gem in that March Wedding Expo, it still took us more days of decision making before we finally chose them (singsing ito, so hindi pwedeng impulsive diba! haha!). But in spite of the delay, they still gave us the same discount rate they had during the Expo. All we had to do was to show the original quote -- or the only proof that we found them during during that event. :)

Click here for V-Gem's website.

P.S. - we've searched all corners of the metro actually. But sadly no one can make LOTR rings that can make us invisible. Sorry, Lou. :P

note: photos above are from our photographer, Alvin Guevara. 
another note: V-Gem is NOT the maker of our engagement ring.