When I was eight years old, my family and I took a summer vacation to the beautiful tropical paradise of Maui, one of the islands that makes up the state of Hawaii.  My parents, brother, grandmother, and I all piled onto the plane and were extremely excited for our trip, during which time we would be celebrating my mother’s birthday, my brother’s birthday, and my parents’ wedding anniversary.

Platinum Rings

Because I was quite young when we took that summer vacation together, I really don’t remember much.  What I do remember has been aided by pictures and the recounting of tales by my other family members.  I know we went to a luau and I learned how to dance the hula on stage in front of the entire audience, and I also remember the warm water that crashed against the shore every morning.  My brother and I used to run down to the water’s edge right at dawn, when it was still quiet and the rest of the city hadn’t woken up yet.  We would surf and play in the warm ocean until the sun came up, and then run back home, famished, where breakfast would be waiting.
One of the memories that sticks out most in my mind, though, is the night we went out as a family to celebrate my parents’ wedding anniversary.  They had already been together for a long time when I was that age, and we went out to dinner at what I thought was a very fancy restaurant, because it was so dimly lit.  You could barely even see your plate of food in front of you!
Oddly enough, on the night of their anniversary, my mom lost her wedding ring.  Somehow it slipped right off of her finger, and who knows where it went– we never did find it.  However my mom was not that devastated from losing her wedding ring because it meant she could get a newer, bigger, and better replacement.  She decided to go with stunning platinum rings to adorn her left ring finger, and she couldn’t have been more elated.  She told me she had always wanted a platinum wedding ring, but that they weren’t really available when she and my father had gotten married.  I guess they just hadn’t come into style yet.

Nice example of a tungsten wedding band

Even though my mother was happy to get a replacement ring, she did feel bad that she lost the original ring from her wedding.  To make my dad feel better about it, she decided to pay for him to get an upgrade too.  He picked something out from a collection of tungsten wedding bands.  Tungsten is a metal that is not only beautiful but totally durable, too.  In fact, tungsten is regarded as a heftier ring; the ideal metal for men because it has so much weight.  Between the quality of metals and the beauty of the rings, it goes without saying that neither one of my parents’ rings has fallen off in the many years since our Hawaiian vacation.