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A TRUE STORY. On Christmas morning there were three generations of my family gathered around our Christmas tree. My wife and I looked with sweet memories at two of our three daughters, and their families. And then we looked at our first-born daughter, who was completing her first day as a newly engaged woman. She and her fiancé had dated for quite some time and we were so excited—because we had come to see him as part of the family.
Earlier that week I had seen the “Bride’s Pendant” for the first time. My jeweler had explained the symbolism of the piece. And that Christmas Morning, as I watched my first-born daughter and her new fiancé open gifts together, I reflected on the incredible story in our own families which the Bride’s Pendant represents. There are two gold rings joined and interwoven-- just as these two young lives were soon to be, and as my own wife’s and mine were, many years ago, when we shared our own first Christmas together. But there are also two dazzling diamonds within the set-- two precious lives. I got up to speak. I interrupted the laughter to share my thoughts and my thankfulness. I turned to my wife, who had given me the most beautiful three daughters on earth, and held an unopened box in my hand. I tried to share the importance of inter-woven lives, and the strength of our family bonds, and the love each of us radiates to the others, like diamonds reflecting the light of life. I looked at my wife, surrounded by her daughters and our family, and a radiance came into her face which I will always remember. I thanked her for all the wonderful Christmases we had spent together. And to my daughter and her fiance´, I said that the greatest gift we could give them was a prayer that they would have as many tender years of happiness as her mother and I had known. Then, I gave the Bride’s Pendant to my own bride, my best friend of twenty-seven years. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house, not even my own. | 
