Hi Everyone,

I've lurked for a while now and picked up some great tips and advice, just wonder if anyone can help me out with my first wedding ring commission I am making for a friend of a friend. I work in silver usually so I'm a bit out of my comfort zone.

The order is for 2 relatively straightforward hammered gold bands, with a domed/curved profile. 1 as thin as possible for the bride. She has described what she wants as being really lightweight and insubstantial. Definitely less than 3mm width across the finger and probably well under 1.4mm thickness before hammering. The groom wants the same style band with hammered finish but more robust, hardwearing, thick etc at least a 6mm-8mm band width and thicker mm depth of gold. Their budget is £500 for both rings. I have been looking at different Yellow gold D shaped wires available and I think it will be a push to get these made up in 18ct for their budget? (Cost of the grooms ring, mainly) Would you agree? They are ok with going for 9ct - so I'm just wondering how thin I dare go with the D shape wire for the bride if I am going to be hammering a texture on it? Would 2mmx.125mm be too risky if I'm going to be heavily texturing it? She is a size O and I've practised with some silver D shape wire I had to hand, which was 4mm x 1.4mm. It stretched up pretty easily from the size M that I made it , into the size O required and became a lot thinner, obviously. So wondered how much thinner than 1.4mm depth I should buy in gold?
I'm also wondering with the grooms (size T) whether I would need to make it a full 2 sizes smaller, or if I'm using a much thicker gold wire than the brides, will it stretch less and so I should make it just 1 size smaller (Size S) before hammering texture? I have a ring stretcher so could always make us of that if required.

So, my main questions really are:

-What dimensions of D shaped wire would you recommend I go for with for each? There are a lot of choices and it's hard to know without having used these particular dimensions
of wire before. Don't want to go too thick/thin bearing in mind the hammered finish.

-would you say £500 for both rules out 18ct? (I get a trade discount on ring blanks but not on the gold wire).

-which leads me onto, ring blanks- I have had two different jewellers advise me to make it easy for myself and just buy ring blanks and texture them up. I would feel a bit of a cheat doing it this way though, especially as it's my first wedding band commission. The upside to this is they are already hallmarked- the date of the wedding is 15th March so I am unsure if I could get the rings I am due to be making hallmarked in time for the wedding if I made them up in wire. That would have to happen afterwards, which the bride and groom are fine with, but then would the hallmarking effect the hammered finish slightly?- Would it have to be the lasered hallmarking after the wedding which is obviously more expensive?

Sorry for the massive amount of text for what must seem like a really straightforward commission to everyone on here, but I just don't want to screw it up! I want to be clear on exactly the right type of wire I need before ordering and on those other factors I have to consider in the process.

Any tips/advice very gratefully received!
Thank you!

Deborah