A penny for your hugs: Mitch and Romina’s story
Love stories can be told in many ways. They can be inside jokes, hidden secrets or grand gestures… This story contains all three.
When Mitch and Romina first started dating, he told her that unlimited hugs would cost one cent. She bought him a bag of one cent coins as his first gift. Little did they know, those coins would one day inspire the story of their engagement and wedding rings.
Romina doesn’t wear much jewellery, but Mitch knew she’d love a gem that was untraditional, and distinctly so. After our first jewellery consult (where we discussed gemstones, metallurgy and the fully functional Nintendo-inspired coffee table he’d recently built) we selected a hexagon salt and pepper diamond as the feature stone in Romina’s ring. It was important that the diamond was predominantly opaque, with just a hint of translucency. You’ll see why later.
Mitch also brought me a penny from the original collection Romina had gifted him. A true maker at heart, he couldn’t hand it over without crafting a custom coin holder to present it in!
With carefully weighed granules of pure gold, we mixed a special rose gold alloy to incorporate into both rings.
Click the video below to watch the gold alloy being melted
On Mitch’s ring, the melted bar was transformed into a beautifully contrasting rose gold panel, polished to offset the textured platinum band. On Romina’s ring, a forever hidden rose gold “coin” was embedded in the platinum setting under the salt and pepper diamond. It’s invisible most of the time, but from some angles, you can see a soft rosy hue glowing from the depths of the stone.
These are the last photos ever taken of the “coin”. The diamond was set in December 2023, marking the last time it would ever be seen.
On the inside of Mitch’s ring, we set a black diamond in a hexagon shaped setting to echo the shape of Romina’s stone.
The ring box
I’d love to take all the credit, but I wasn’t the only one hard at work. While I was busy making the rings, Mitch was crafting a custom box to propose with.
“The idea for the ring box was from a Youtube video by Measured Workshop,” he says. “I drew up my own designs based off of that video and iterated on it multiple times. My files go up to version 15, but there were minor iterations in each of them.”
“I spent over 100 hours making the ring box, between tuning the CNC machine to get better results, trying out different finishes, experimenting with hinges and paper mechanisms, talking to people about what I was doing and getting their feedback, and finally making the box that I would end up using,” he says.
The ring box was made from reclaimed blackbutt timber with a dynamic mechanism that gracefully elevates the ring as the box opens.
For his own ring, Mitch made a felt-lined box out of the same reclaimed timber. And I was lucky enough to get to keep one of his samples!
The proposal
In February, Mitch brought Romina to the first place they had gone away together as a couple.
“We went up to the Blue Mountains over the weekend and while we were at Narrow Neck Lookout, I asked her to marry me,” he says.
“Romina was so distracted by a pair of magpies behind me that the first word out of her mouth was ‘No’.
“I asked her again and she said yes! Romina loves all of the stories that have gone into the making of the ring and the fact that I had managed to not spill the beans about the ring, the box or the planning for the proposal to her!”
Love Mitch and Romina’s design journey?
A great story can elevate a piece of jewellery from ‘beautiful’ to ‘infinitely special’. What’s even more fun is telling that story through design, without using any words at all.
Book a call or send an email to start the conversation about your very own bespoke wedding and engagement rings.
We’ll find the sparkle in your story and turn it into a highly personalised keepsake.
