I'm pretty stoked that so many people have benefitted from this thread... hope it will continue to help out future dudes hunting for rings as well. Thanks again for all the sound advice & helpful guidance, dudes.
Seeing as how it appears I'm the OP, this post will serve as my final update..... we got married this past weekend in the Cayman Islands. So, I guess things ended up well, and the ring still looks good.
We bought my wife's wedding band from BlueNile... it is the perfect matching band for the ring we bought, and it looks awesome. Once again BlueNile was awesome: fast shipping, good service, and a way better price than anything we looked at locally. Very well-run company, pleasure to deal with.
In terms of the entire process of ring/wedding band purchasing, if I could do anything over again, it would be to go with white gold for the band rather than platinum. As I recently learned, you want to have the wedding band and engagement ring made from the same material, otherwise the softer material (ie. gold) will be scratched when it rubs against the harder metal (ie. platinum). Because my wife's engagement ring band was platinum, we had to go with a platinum wedding band, which skyrocketed the price from $850 to $2500 (for the identical band). Not a big deal in the end but I don't see any reason to go with platinum over white gold unless your woman loves to brag about how $$ her ring is.
Anyway, fuck it, we're married now and both rings are on her finger... not going to think about jewellery again for a looooong time.... probably until my next wedding...
