A Denver-area man wanted to do something special for his wedding proposal, and that meant getting hands-on. Jack Vulcani spent months panning for gold in a number of Colorado rivers until he had enough to cast a customized wedding ring for his longtime girlfriend.
The result of all that hard work? Not enough to kick off a new gold rush, but enough to get the job done. Vulcani collected enough flecks of gold dust to cast into a ring for his now-wife Joanne, with enough leftover to make a wedding band for himself.
Vulcani recently shared his story of determination with 9News, describing how the seemingly Sisyphean nature of the task only drove him to continue on.
“I was like, ‘This is going to take forever,’ and for some reason that got me going, you know?’” he told the Denver news channel.
When he thought he had collected enough, Vulcani brought it to Zachery Allen with Jewelers’ Bench in Wheat Ridge, who took on the challenge of melting down the gold flakes and pouring it into a mold that would make someone proud enough to present it to the love of their life.
Once the ring was cast, Vulcani did just that, bringing Joanne on a hike and pulling out the one-of-a-kind ring, but not before showing her a video depicting the months of work he had put in on the riverside.
“I’m just watching this video of him gold-panning and I’m like, ‘This is cute, but I don’t know why we’re doing this right now,’” she recalled to 9News. “And then halfway through the video I realized, ‘Oh, this is the process of you making the ring,’ and I just started crying. I black[ed] out a little bit, but it was a really special moment.”
Vulcani explained that, while he knows he may be setting the bar high now that his story is going viral, he only ever meant to make something special for Joanne.
“I just wanted to make her day,” he said, “not crush anybody else’s dreams.”
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