Gord and Lisa
"Absolutely, we can do anything."
Vintage style and Scottish imagery are two of the personal flourishes that make the engagement ring Gord gave to his fiancée Lisa a one-of-a-kind symbol of their life together.
“I was content to have a simple ring but it was really important to Gord that I have something very special,” Lisa says. “We talked about it a few times and we looked at a few [rings], but no matter what we saw, it wasn't the right quality, it just wasn't enough. Everywhere we looked, [the rings] all looked the same. They were all identical.”
Gord and Lisa finally decided to make their own ring at Lessard Coutu Custom Jewellers and began working with proprietor Moe Coutu. “We realized ‘Ah! We can pick anything. They can do anything for me!’” Lisa recalls.
From the beginning, Lisa knew that she wanted an oval diamond as the centre stone, but little more. Encouraged by Moe, she pulled together all the ideas that inspired her, “and then I just brought them to him and said ‘here, this is who I am, this is what we want.’”
Gord and Lisa are both entrepreneurs who like to travel, and they planned a wedding ceremony in Scotland – which is commemorated by an engraving of a Scottish thistle on the inside of the ring. The sides of the ring feature vintage elements from a 1930s ring with the oval diamond taking center stage.
Even though Lisa had seen prototypes of the design, as well as digital images and the cast itself, seeing the actual ring on her hand was an unforgettable surprise, she says.
“He opened the box and I thought, ‘Oh, my goodness... It's huge!’ And then once it was on my hand, I was just amazed by how beautiful it was. It was a balmy, overcast December day and I just thought, ‘this ring is unbelievable! It's just so beautiful.’ It was so much more than I expected it to be. Which is funny, you think you should have known. But you can't imagine once it's all finally put together. And then it's there in your hand, wow, I was blown away. It's just so, so beautiful.”
The couple turned to Lessard Coutu Custom Jewellers to make Gord’s wedding ring as well.
“We couldn't find anything anywhere for him that was him,”
Lisa explains. “I'm not a jewelry guy,” says Gord. “I didn't want anything too shiny or too fancy. I looked at all kinds of stuff. If I'm going to wear a ring, it should be something cool. So I made it.”
One design that caught Gord’s eye was similar to a tire tread. “I thought ‘can we do a tire tread?’ and [Moe] said ‘absolutely, we can do anything.’ And that's when we searched through different patterns and I found the one I wanted out of an old magazine and sent him a picture and he designed it perfectly.”
“At our wedding, I heard someone say, "Oh my goodness, let me see your ring! And I went to put my hand out, but they wanted to look at Gord's,” Lisa laughs. “So that was kind of cool – the only time I was upstaged by your ring,” she says to Gord. “It was another car guy.”
“Our rings are quite different,” Lisa notes. “They're very much just about us as individuals. We thought about trying to do something similar but that just wasn't going to work because that's just not who we are. Gord's a big time car guy, very simple … certainly not anything sparkly. I have enough sparkle for both of us!”
A custom engagement ring is “definitely the way to go,” Gord says. “You're not going to have something that everyone else has. It doesn't matter what your budget is, small or large. They can build anything and doesn't matter what you have to spend, it's going to be your own, it's going to be something that only the two of you have and it's a great process, definitely the way to go. Anyone can buy something from a store or online … but this is way different. Way better.”
“It's a lovely process too, the fact that we did it together made a big difference for us,” says Lisa. “Because there's memories in the ring before we even did any of the things that we're going to do. We knew the wedding was coming, we knew we were going to be married, we knew what we were going to do. This is now part of it. It's a lot of fun! We did that together! And it's lovely.”