Wedding Band Dilemma

Until recently, I thought I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted for my wedding band--the one that matches my engagement ring. Here is a picture of my ring, with a slightly larger center diamond :), and the matching band:



The bands have micro-pave diamonds in bead settings. I have also heard these called "micro-prong" settings.

While in Billings, we met with Tony Soueidi, a well-known jeweler in the area who also happens to be the father-in-law of my good friend Brittany. He told us that if you pair two bands with bead settings, such as the ones above, over time the bands will rub together, weakening the settings and eventually causing the loss of the diamonds in the band--yikes! He said most jewelers won't tell you about this effect, and he was right--our previous jeweler had never mentioned it.

In order to reduce the wear-and-tear, he recommended that I get a channel-set diamond band instead, similar to the one below:



Unfortunately, I have just never been a very big fan of the channel setting--it's just not my preference. Instead, he recommended that we get a bead-set notched band, and have it fused to the engagement ring so that the two don't rub together. Here is a ring similar to the one he suggested:



Given that he was suggesting what was best for my ring, I really wished that I liked either of these options. But I just didn't really! I didn't like the look of the channel setting, and I didn't really like the notched band or the idea of having it fused to my engagement ring. So he showed me the one I had originally liked, the bead-set micro-pave band (the one on the very top), and we decided that we'd go with that one and asked him to see if he could order one for us. And that was that.

Or so I thought...

Steve and I stopped by Tiffany's this past weekend while we were walking around downtown, and I tried on some other bands for fun.

I have always loved this look of "stacked" celebration rings--rings that you get when you celebrate life's big moments that you can wear all together in a stack. I love that each event has its own look, and even though none match the others, they look really cool all together.



What do you think?

Using this concept, I thought it might be kind of cool to go a different direction with my wedding band; rather than getting a band that matches my engagement ring, we could get a wedding band that stands out on its own. I tried on a few, and this one, the "swing," was my favorite. (You can also see it a little better at the top of the stack in the previous picture.)



I am still heavily torn, though... is it too different? Different in a good way? What do you all think?