Love Notes: Catholic Engagement and Wedding Ring Inscriptions

{small ways to show great love}

My nosiness beckons: do you have an inscription engraved in your wedding or engagement ring, and what's the story behind it?

Natalie Franke Photography

In one of the first emails Andrew ever wrote me, long before we were dating, he asked me what my favorite prayer is.  Mine is the Miraculous Medal prayer, and he told me his is the Memorare.  Truth be told, I'd always found the Memorare slightly depressing, what with the line, "before thee we kneel, sinful and sorrowful," and with what I then perceived to be a vibe of desperation.  When Andrew described to me his understanding of the prayer as complete reassurance and comfort in Mary's motherly love for us and the promise of her faithfulness and intercession, my view started changing for the better, and after a sort-of-funny-sort-of-argumentative period of choosing what variation on the words we wanted to say when we prayed together (Not that the words and meaning of the prayer itself are up for debate!  We had each just learned slightly different versions), it quickly became one of my favorite, most consoling prayers, too.

When the time came to choose words to be written in our wedding bands, we decided we wanted something personal to us beyond something like our initials or wedding date.  We prayed, and I asked Andrew what he thought of engraving "before thee we kneel."  From the holy ground where we met to the fact that I'd always prayed my husband would have a devotion to Our Lady and, unknown to me, Andrew had just started doing a daily Rosary around the time we became friends, the Blessed Mother has had our relationship in her hands from long before the start.  A line from a prayer to her, one that would remind us to constantly come before her, together, in complete humility and trust was the perfect choice for us.

I never want to change my ring, but I do sometimes consider other meaningful words I wouldn't mind permanently wearing; namely, in a tattoo that I will probably never choose to get, and I like "be not afraid," "duc in altum," and "verso l'alto."  But enough about me.  So tell me: what's the story behind your ring inscriptions, if you have them, or do you have one in mind for the future?  Scripture verse?  Saint motto?  I would love to know!