Last Friday, I noticed (with a pang of emotion that can only come from the sentimentality we attach to jewelry) that my wedding band was coming un-laser-welded from my engagement ring. At first I had a panicy maybe-this-is-a-bad-omen thought. But, considering my ring's history (and my good relationship with my husband), I quickly began to see this situation as an opportunity to, as my husband would say, "modify" my ring.

Why would I even consider this? Because this August will mark the five-year wedding anniversary for my husband and me. The engagement ring he gave me is an antique, made before the days when women got both an engagement ring and a wedding band. The shape of the ring made it hard for us to find a modern band that would fit next to it, so we had a band made, and unfortunately, neither of us has ever quite loved it.

I have no regrets about the jeweler we went to (I've recommended them to friends, in fact), but I do regret how little I knew about the jewelry-making process back then and how little I asked questions. To make my wedding band, the jewelers expertly copied the etching on the side of the engagement ring onto the side of the band, but the top of the band has always been the questionable part. My husband, who is soon to be an industrial designer, sketched a design for the top of the band, but the jewelers didn't use it. Instead, they went with the infinity symbol, which we'd also discussed as a possibility.

The jewelers, of course, showed us a wax version of what the finished band would look like, but I didn't understand enough about jewelry-buying conventions at the time to know that I could ask them to change it. So, when they presented the wax model, I said, "Sure, that's fine," instead of, "I love the sides, but can we talk about the top?" My then-fiance and I were crunched for time and, being poor college kids, crunched for money, so we took the ring home and tried to pretend that we weren't disappointed. But, well, we've had five years together to find out that we both were.

The good thing about working with people who know about jewelry making is that when you begin to ponder things like revamping your wedding band, you can immediately go find out if you're crazy or not — I mean, is it okay to change a symbol of an unbroken bond? For me, that answer could be "yes" as long as I could reuse the band's metal. So, I stopped in Associate Editor Addie Kidd's office and she quickly assured me that a good jeweler would reuse the metal from my existing band. Then, conscience lifted, we were off with ideas about how to change it.

When I asked my husband on Friday night what he'd think of changing the band to commemorate our fifth anniversary, I was very happy to find that he was as excited about it as I am. So, it's official — I'm getting a makeover for my wedding band.

Keep checking back to find out how the process is going. I'll be talking about planning the new design, finding a jeweler who will work with me, the techniques the jeweler will be using, and more.

And if you've ever done something like this or thought about it, I'd love to hear from you! Just leave me a comment below.

—Kristin